'Leave It to Beaver' star Jerry Mathers reveals why he was ready to leave hit '50s sitcom

Jerry Mathers and Rusty Stevens, who played Beaver’s friend Larry Mondello, are the only surviving members of the show’s core cast. Tony Dow died in 2022.

"It ended at the right time for me," the 74-year-old told Fox News Digital. "I wanted to play sports and of course, working at the studio, that wasn’t something I was able to do. I was [now] able to be on the track team and football team. That was something I really wanted to do. And it was nice being in [a normal school]. I had a private tutor for the whole time that I was on the show. Now I was at a regular school, and it was a lot of fun. And I made a lot of good friends." Stephanie Nolasco covers entertainment at Foxnews.com.

The close-knit cast and crew were also ready to move on, he noted.

"Not that we were tired of it, but it was a lot of work," Mathers admitted. "We had to be at the studio every day at 8 o’clock, work till 5. And on the weekends, a lot of times, we had PR to do… I’m not saying I didn’t like it, but it was just time… I was getting ready to go to high school and [my co-star] Tony Dow was getting ready to go to college. That was something we really couldn’t do if we were still on the show."