‘7 Little Johnstons’: Trent & Amber Johnston Reveal Why Anna Johnston Isn’t Returning To The Show
7 Little Johnstons star Anna Johnston is missing from Season 17, but why? Let’s take a closer look at why Amber and Trent Johnston‘s eldest daughter is missing in action on the TLC reality series. On Tuesday, March 17, Season 17 of 7LJ premiered. But Anna was glaringly absent despite the family celebrating Father’s Day and her sister, Liz Johnston, going wedding dress shopping.
7 Little Johnstons Addressed Why Anna Was Missing in Season 17
In the first half of Season 17, Episode 1, a producer asked Amber and Trent, “So, can you give us an update on what’s going on with Anna?” Trent paused before Amber chimed in to spill the details.
She explained, “All of our children have the opportunity and the freedom to participate in the show. And the ones that have chosen to participate are participating. And the ones that have not are not.” TLC then displayed the following message:” Anna has chosen not to participate in the current season of 7 Little Johnstons.”
Anna Previously Explained Why She Wasn’t Returning to the Show
During a livestream in November 2025, Anna explained the reason she decided not to return to 7 Little Johnstons Season 17. “I think it is sad that the last season [I’ll be part of] is ending like this because I did not want it,” she said, per The Ashley’s Reality Roundup. “I want y’all to see the good side and not just people bashing me and everything like that. Bashing me for dumb stuff that they’re apparently getting onto me about, you know? So that’s hard.”
Ultimately, Anna said she decided to step away from the show to prioritize her mental health. She explained, “It was hard to say no to another season, but it just got to be mentally that I just had to, you know, stop [filming].”
In Season 16 of 7LJ, Anna and her parents addressed the cause of their growing rift. “The starting issue that led to not seeing my family for this amount of time was the graduation gown,” Anna told the show’s producers. “My parents got mad at me because I took Jonah‘s graduation gown, and I didn’t tell them. And they got mad because I didn’t take graduation photos with them. It just kept getting worse and worse, which led to me not even wanting to come around.”
Additionally, Anna did not attend the high school graduation ceremony of Emma and Alex, her two younger siblings. She admitted, “I look back and I regret it now, but it was the fact that nobody spoke to me since then. So why show up and come in and act like everything’s fine?”
However, Trent described a different issue that was front and center in the feud with his daughter. “So we had all of these issues around graduation. But actually, where it really started was a few months before that,” he said. The Johnston patriarch continued, “Anna was supposed to be giving an underage girl a ride back to our home. And instead, she took her out to a bar, bought her alcohol, got her intoxicated. And then when she gets caught and she gets in trouble, she’s mad at us.”
Catch new episodes of 7 Little Johnstons on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on TLC and streaming the next day on HBO Max.
