Jamie Lynn Spears’ Pregnancy Didn’t Actually Get ‘Zoey 101’ Canceled

Years after Zoey 101 came to an end, fans of the series are still sad about the abrupt cancellation. Premiering on Nickelodeon back in 2005 and following a group of students at the Pacific Coast Academy, the series quickly became one of the network’s highest-rated and most successful series of that decade. But after that much success, why did the show end in 2008 after just four seasons? It turns out that despite those long-standing rumors, the beloved show did not end because of Jamie Lynn Spears‘ pregnancy.

Spears, who led the series as teenager Zoey Brook, became pregnant with her first child, Maddie, with then-boyfriend Casey Aldridge shortly after Zoey 101 wrapped its fourth season when she was 16. The series did not return for a fifth season, and Spears gave birth to her first child in June 2008, just a month after Zoey 101 aired its final episode on May 2, 2008.

In the months and years that followed, many fans blamed the end of the show on her pregnancy, though Spears shut down that speculation when marking the show’s 14th anniversary on Instagram back in January 2019, confirming in the hashtags, “it did NOT end because of pregnancy.” Responding to a fan who asked, “you didn’t quit because you were pregnant,” Spears said, “nope,” explaining that after the show wrapped, she “went home to finish high school and was going to pursue movies.” She insisted in another reply that her contract would not have been extended even if she hadn’t become pregnant. Speaking with Nylon that same year, Spears doubled down on those comments, explaining that the show had simply run its course.

“In today’s world, immediately I’d have my social media to post something and it’d be cleared up. But even today, people still have their thoughts about it,” she said. “I didn’t become pregnant until probably six months after we wrapped or something like that, but some of the episodes had not aired yet. I think that there was a conversation with Nickelodeon, rightfully so, of, ‘Do we air these episodes?’ But the show had already wrapped and there was never a negotiation to go into any more seasons. We were too old. It was done.”

While the show may have been “done” back then, it’s not necessarily a closed book. In the years since the series ended, there have been multiple reports that a Zoey 101 reboot could be in the works. In fact, the cast even reunited in October 2020 for a new, reimagined version of the Nickelodeon show’s theme song “Follow Me (Zoey 101).” After the song’s release, Spears told ET Canada she was “already in conversations with everyone about the reboot” and she believed “the reboot is going to happen even faster now.” While little more news has surfaced about the potential reboot, series star Chris Massey told TMZ in July that the drama between Spears and her sister, Britney Spears, surrounding the latter’s conservatorship would not detail the planned revival.