Smash creator and former showrunner Theresa Rebeck explained her departure from the NBC musical drama and revealed that Karen was not originally intended to be a main focus of the show.

“People found her to be a very attractive character, so they asked me to write that,” Rebeck told the New York Observer about Karen Cartwright’s character. “I was okay with it. I was like, I’ve got that in my back pocket.”

But there were other areas of conflict with the network that eventually led the creator to step down.

“One of the points of contention last year was that the network thinks they have the right to say to the writer of the show, ‘We don’t want her to do this. We want her to do this,’ ” Rebeck said. “And I would sometimes say back to them, ‘She would never do that.’ And they’d look at me like I was crazy, and I’d be like, ‘Nope, it’s not crazy, it’s just who the character is.’ ”

“You have to respect who the character is,” she added. “It has its own internal truth and you can’t betray that. And if you don’t betray that, it will not betray you. There is this sort of sense that if you don’t f— with the muse — if you don’t f— with the muse, the muse will stand by you.”

She would be replaced by former Gossip Girl showrunner Josh Safran. Although it was orginally reported that Rebeck would remain with the show as a writer-producer, she later told Vulture she was “moving on.”

“I have other things to do. I feel like it is what it is and I’m really proud of the work I did, and it was time to do some other stuff. I owe Random House a novel and I was really excited about finishing that for them and I am also going to the O’Neil with a new play this summer. So I just have a lot of things on a plate.”

With Safran at the helm, Smash has seen many cast changes for its upcoming second season. Of note are the additions of Jennifer Hudson, Liza Minnelli, Nikki Blonsky, Jesse L. Martin, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Sean Hayes in guest roles and the departures of Will Chase (Michael Swift), Brian d’Arcy James (Frank), Raza Jaffrey (Dev) and Jaime Cepero (Ellis). Jeremy Jordan, Krysta Rodriguez and Andy Mientus join the cast as the regulars. You can see them in the new season 2 poster.

Smash returns to NBC on a new night, Tuesday, Feb. 5 with a two-hour season premiere.