New Girl Casting Shakeup! Who's Leaving After This Season?

Find out which series regular is exiting the hit Fox comedy!

Looks like the loft was getting a little too crowded!

New Girl is about to lose one of its series regulars and the departing star is...Coach! E! News has confirmed that Damon Wayans Jr. will be leaving the hit Fox comedy after this season.

"I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to come back to New Girl in season three to reprise the role of Coach," Wayans said in a statement. "Working with this incredibly talented and funny cast and crew has been one of the best experiences of my career."

TVLine first reported the news of Wayans' exit.

"We love Damon and are so lucky to have had him return for the past season-and-a-half," New Girl executive producer Liz Meriwether said. "We are working on crafting an exit for him that will leave the door open for many more returns, especially since Coach is our resolution to the upcoming ‘Who's Jess' Baby Daddy?' storyline."

Meriwether is clearly joking about that last part, since Zooey Deschanel herself told us that Jess won't be pregnant (unlike Deschanel in real life, who is expecting her first child with Jacob Pechenik).

"It's been pretty easy to hide in costumes so far!" Deschanel says. "And we only have about four episodes left in the season, so we're doing pretty well."

This isn't the first time Coach moved out of the loft. Wayans starred in the New Girl pilot back in 2011, but due to his other hit pilot, ABC's Happy Endings, also getting picked up, he was unable to continue on with the Fox comedy. That's when Winston (Lamorne Morris) was introduced to replace Coach.

But the saga didn't end there! When Happy Endings was unfortunately canceled (way too soon, in the opinion of just about everyone!), Wayans then reprised his role of Coach on New Girl for multiple episodes, and continued to guest star for the rest of season three. And just before season four began, he was promoted to a series regular once again, this time for a one-year deal, which concludes at the end of this season.

But don't start saying those farewells to Wayans yet, since he is still set to appear in every remaining episode of the current season. In fact, in the next episode, Coach even meets a possible love interest played by Banshee‘s Meaghan Rath during an epic Valentine's Day bar crawl!

New Girl airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox.