Why Hollywood Stopped Casting 13 Reasons Why Star Dylan Minnette

Dylan Minnette is an actor who was making his way toward ever brighter spotlights for quite some time. He burst on the scene as a child in the mid-2000s, appearing on a laundry list of popular shows like "Two and a Half Men," "Prison Break," "Grey's Anatomy," and many others. From 2007 to 2010, he started playing Clay Norman in the psychological crime drama "Saving Grace." However, his true small screen breakthrough was another Clay — namely, central protagonist Clay Jensen in the dark Netflix teen drama "13 Reasons Why," on which he starred from 2017 to 2020. 

As Minnette's career progressed, he also started getting notable movie roles. You may have seen him in Matt Reeves' unique 2010 vampire story "Let Me In," opposite Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal in Denis Villeneuve's ruthless 2013 psychological crime thriller "Prisoners," Fede Alvarez's terrific 2016 home invasion horror "Don't Breathe," and more. In other words, Minnette showed all the signs of an up-and-coming big thing, or at least a steadily rising star.

But then as the 2010s gave way to the early 2020s, Minnette suddenly disappeared from the screen. Apart from playing Wes Hicks in "Scream" (2022) and Tyler Shultz in the same year's Elizabeth Holmes Hulu docudrama "The Dropout," Minnette's screen acting career after the ending of "13 Reasons Why" has been nonexistent. Why haven't we heard any more about this talented young actor as of late? Let's take a moment to find out.

Dylan Minnette has said that his need to fulfill his acting dreams and push himself further is a constant in his life. "I think that I think too much about the future," he told Buzzfeed in 2022. "I think too much about where I'll be in 10 years. It's a blessing and a curse. I like to be methodical about it, because that's how I feel like I can strive to actually conquer and achieve my goals."

Speaking of 2022, that year saw one particular dream of Minnette's come true when he played the role of Wes Hicks in the fifth "Scream" movie. As a big fan of the franchise, Minnette was exhilarated to get the opportunity. "I could play Victim Number Three in a 'Scream' movie, I don't care," he enthused to Buzzfeed. "I was very persistent with my manager and agent, being like, 'Do you know what's going on with this movie? Is there any part I can play?'" 

Though Wes isn't a particularly large role and is neither the best or the worst thing about 2022's "Scream," he's the son of returning "Scream 4" character Judy Hicks (Marley Shelton), and gets a pretty tense Ghostface confrontation scene to boot. Minnette is a guy who likes to chase his dreams — and with one dream fulfilled thanks to his "Scream" role, he set off to chase others. 

When an actor hasn't been plying their trade for a few years, it's easy to suspect that they've joined the ranks of actors who walked away from Hollywood at their peak – or alternately, actors who quit Hollywood for sad reasons. Still, fans who fear that Dylan Minnette has retired from acting don't need to give up hope. Even though the actor hasn't appeared in a movie or a TV show since 2022, the thought of returning has crossed his mind. If Minnette had his way, he might already have appeared in something post-2022, but events conspired against this plan.  

During a 2024 appearance on "Zach Sang Show," Minnette explained that he actually considered returning to acting in 2023, but that particular window happened to coincide with the worst possible time to be thinking about it: the tense period of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes, when the members of the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America both went on strike over the complexities of the changing entertainment industry landscape. This, as one might guess, ended up deflating Minnette's acting aspirations for the time being.

"In my mind, I was going to do something last year, in this time frame from like this month to this month," Minnette said on the show. "And that time frame was the actor strike, the SAG strike. And it didn't work out. So I really was thinking about it." 

It's true that fans of Dylan Minnette's acting may have been left hanging as of late. On the other hand, fans of his music have been eating very well. Minnette, as it happens, is something of a renaissance man when it comes to art. Apart from his acting, he's a talented singer and guitarist who's played with fellow singer-guitarist Braeden Lemasters and drummer Cole Preston since the three were just 11 years old.

In 2017, the three friends officially formed the indie rock trio Wallows, and they soon saw enough success to play the Coachella festival in 2019. "It was nerve-racking," Minnette said about the experience during an appearance on the Therapuss with Jake Shane podcast (via Billboard). "We had never played the new songs live, never used in-ear monitors. It was a lot, and after that I was like, we're never doing Coachella as the first stop of the tour again."

Wallows, it seems, has been Minnette's No. 1 priority during his years away from acting. "I feel like I'm in a position now where I can do [Wallows] for a while, and get this the furthest it can be," he said in the Zach Sang Show interview. "And the only way that's going to happen is if I put my 100% time and energy into it and take it very seriously and show the world that we all take this very seriously."

Cover songs can be touch and go, and according to Dylan Minnette, he once learned firsthand that fans can get pretty disgruntled when another musician takes their idol's songs for a spin. In 2024, Dylan Minnette's band Wallows decided to cover a song that was very, very famous. Sabrina Carpenter's single "Espresso" was released in April 2024, and it would be an understatement to say that it was a hit — in fact, it spent no less than 63 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Wallows jumped in on the action very early. They performed a cover of "Espresso" for SiriusXM as early as May 2024, turning it into an acoustic indie pop rendition. However, Minnette admitted in an interview with Grammy.com that this move didn't really go over well with some Carpenter aficionados. "There are some Sabrina Carpenter fans who are really mad I attempted to sing that song," he said. "'You could never be Sabrina!' I'm like, 'I know I can never be Sabrina!'"

However, this particular artistic adventure ended up yielding dividends in the shape of Carpenter's own nod at the Wallows cover. "She texted me recently and gave the seal of approval," Minnette said in the interview. "That's all we needed."

The timeline of Wallows' album releases might offer another clue about why Dylan Minnette hasn't been tackling acting projects on top of his musical career. He was still busy acting when the band's debut, "Nothing Happens," was released in 2019. Wallows' sophomore album, "Tell Me That It's Over," came out in 2022, coinciding with the end of his acting credentials to date. In 2024, the group's third album, "Model," dropped. 

Three albums in six years seems like the release schedule of a serious, ambitious band instead of a vanity project or a half-hearted side quest. What's more, the band's poppy indie rock isn't bad by any means. "Tell Me That It's Over" got very decent reviews, and while the reception for "Model" was slightly more lackluster, it marked a deliberate shift toward a more listener-friendly sound and larger venues. It was another career move that signals Minnette's intention to see how far music can carry him and his bandmates. 

"We want this to be the most approachable album we've made," Minnette told Rolling Stone ahead of the "Model" release. "I want people to put this on if they're not really a fan of us, and be gripped immediately. We don't want to take too much of their attention, but we want to keep it. We keep them the whole time and make them want to come back."

Apart from maintaining a healthy album release schedule with Wallows and expressing an interest in focusing on music, Dylan Minnette has been putting his money where his mouth is by being on the road with the band — on a global scale, no less. Wallows supported their 2024 album, "Model," with a full-on world tour, which kicked off on August 6 of that year. The Model World Tour took them from North American and European venues all the way to Australia and New Zealand, and concluded on October 22 in London's Alexandra Palace. Apart from different continents, the tour saw them playing some pretty famous venues, such as New York City's esteemed Madison Square Garden. In other words, this isn't what you'd call a small operation.

"When we started the band seven years ago, when I look back it's been a very natural progression; it's not like we went straight from 200-capacity clubs to arenas," Wallows member Braedan Lemasters told Grammy.com about the band's development. "We've gone through the stages and right growth, and now we're entering this uncharted territory. We actually haven't even opened up at these venues for anyone, so it'll be our first time playing an arena."

Wallows didn't rest on their laurels for long after their arena tour was over. In February 2025, they embarked on the Model & More tour in support of their "More" EP.

Filming a TV show can be an intense job, and it can also create lots of friendships between cast members. As such, after the ending of "13 Reasons Why" Season 4 brought the series to a close, it's tempting to think that Dylan Minnette remained close with his castmates. 

Since Minnette was on "13 Reasons Why" throughout its run, it would make sense that he, in particular, would be close with a wide array of his old co-stars even after the show's end. However, this isn't quite true. In the Buzzfeed interview, he revealed that he's only kept in touch with a handful of his old co-stars, though he did specify that there are mitigating factors. He simply moved from the show to his busy life with Wallows very quickly — and by the time he wasn't on the road anymore, the global COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult to socialize.

"I don't keep in touch with as many of them as I wish I did. I feel like [it's] just because COVID happened," he told Buzzfeed. "We finished shooting, I toured for a couple months, and then it was COVID, so I haven't really seen them very often. I do want to catch up with them more. I speak to Brandon [Flynn] and Miles [Heizer] pretty often, and I saw Alisha [Boe] not too long ago."

Dylan Minnette's acting hiatus has been going on for quite a few years now, so fans are no doubt interested in all the reasons he hasn't pursued more roles. Apart from his focus on his musical career, there was another contributing factor, which may concern Minnette aficionados who are still holding out for his next project: He started growing disillusioned with the acting work.  

Minnette described his feelings about acting during the aforementioned Zach Sang Show interview in 2024. "I was fortunate to find success in [acting]," he said (via the Hollywood Reporter). "I was on '13 Reasons Why' and it was really popular and definitely reached a peak in what I've had in acting. But it also started to feel like a bit of a job. And I was in a very fortunate position, it was always fun for me, always really inspiring, but then it was just starting to feel like just a job."

Minnette went on to elaborate that, as he saw it, music in general and Wallows in particular are about passion for him. As such, when he started feeling that his heart wasn't entirely in acting, he weighed his options and understood that he was in a position where he could focus on the thing he feels more passionate about. 

Though music is certainly eating up a lot of Dylan Minnette's time and focus, he's never actually stated that he's retired from acting. In fact, he's not a fan of his career path being represented that way. During his appearance on the Therapuss with Jake Shane podcast in 2025, Minnette reflected on the stories about him leaving the acting game behind, and teased that he might actually be closer to an acting comeback — if it can be called that — than one might suspect.

"I think there was a weird narrative that's gone around that I quit acting, but I never felt that or said that," Minnette explained. "I feel like I've had a desire to do it again in some regard, and if the right thing comes along, then the right thing comes along."

It's true that there has been talk of Minnette quitting acting completely. For instance, the Zach Sang Show clip where he discusses viewing acting as a job and choosing to focus on Wallows is titled "Dylan Minnette reveals why he quit acting." Combined with an ongoing lack of new Minnette TV or movie projects, it's hardly shocking if some are starting to suspect that he might be a "former" actor — but going by Minnette's own words, he may very well return in front of the camera before long. 

As we've learned, Dylan Minnette is keeping his acting options open, but he's also someone who enjoys new challenges. As such, it doesn't seem that he's going to accept just any old movie or show. Fortunately for prospective Hollywood big shots who might be keen to secure his services, there's already a cheat code for Minnette's attention. As he said in the Buzzfeed interview, there are a few names that would be very likely to reel him in, should the opportunity arise — and as it happens, said names are pretty major ones. 

"I mean, it would be awesome to work with Leonardo DiCaprio or Joaquin Phoenix," Minnette said. "I'd love to do something with Spike Jonze, whether it was a new film project or if it was music related, like a music video or something. He probably doesn't know who I am, but I admire him so much."

Jumping from "13 Reasons Why" to a project with one of these three titans after a multi-year hiatus might seem like a pretty tall order, but Minnette has a history of working with major names. In Denis Villeneuve's "Prisoners" alone, he was part of a cast that included then-future Academy Award winner Viola Davis, Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, and many others. Meanwhile, "Saving Grace" gave him a chance to work with Academy Award winner Holly Hunter.