The Causes Behind the Largest Forged Adjustments

Not each Gray’s Anatomy exit is created equally. Katherine Heigl, Patrick Dempsey, Justin Chambers and extra stars have left Gray Sloan Memorial Hospital — for varied causes.

Created by Shonda Rhimes and starring Ellen Pompeo, Gray’s Anatomy debuted on ABC in 2005. Whereas the actress who performs Meredith Gray has admitted that she’s practically walked away up to now, Pompeo is among the solely authentic solid members nonetheless on the sequence as of season 17. Chandra Wilson (Miranda Bailey) and James Pickens Jr. (Richard Webber) are the one different two OGs remaining.

Even Rhimes left ABC in 2017, handing the reins over to Krista Vernoff to take over as showrunner.

“On each present I’ve ever labored on, there are tales you want you would have advised in a different way, however they had been derailed by a behind-the-scenes subject. And that’s the factor that followers don’t perceive,” Vernoff, who labored on seasons 1-7 of Gray’s earlier than returning for season 14, advised the Los Angeles Occasions in November 2020. “So, when you’re responding to fan outcries, you possibly can go loopy since you need to inform them: ‘If some couple broke up actually out of the blue in the course of what was a extremely exceedingly lovely arc, that in all probability wasn’t what the writers needed! There was in all probability some s—t taking place behind the scenes that we needed to keep up all evening rewriting scripts to attempt to have any semblance of a narrative to inform.’ That’s why writers have producer titles in tv since you’re not spending two years writing a script after which that’s an ideal script and you then’re transport it up for individuals to shoot. There are personalities concerned.”

Vernoff cited Heigl’s unprecedented exit through the center of season 6 for instance.

“There was a decision to Izzie’s story. We had deliberate to have her come again for an episode to actually correctly tie up Izzie and Alex (Chambers). And I wrote that episode, and it was lovely. The day earlier than it was supposed to start out prepping or capturing, I can’t keep in mind, we received a name that Katie wasn’t coming. Simply wasn’t coming. Wasn’t going to do it,” the author stated. “It turned my job to remain up all evening for a number of nights and reimagine a script that didn’t embrace Izzie. And for years and years and years and years and years, the followers scream at us, ‘How may you?’ Properly, that’s the behind-the-scenes story. That’s what occurred. I’m not saying that to bash Katie. I don’t know what was taking place in her life.”

Sources near Heigel, nevertheless, inform Us that “Vernoff is mistaken” with regards to the actress’ exit from the sequence. “Katherine was again in L.A. after parental depart (when she adopted her daughter) ready to be known as to set,” the sources stated.

Whereas Heigl has but to return since her departure in 2010, Dempsey made headlines in November 2020 when his character, who died throughout season 11, made an anticipated look within the season 17 premiere.

“Patrick and Ellen and I had been all there in the beginning of this; I wasn’t there for the pilot, however I used to be there for the primary seven seasons, and that was 17 years in the past,” Vernoff advised Deadline on the time. “That was, like, a lifetime in the past; my youngsters weren’t alive. It was so wild to stroll out on that seashore, and simply be collectively once more as these completely different folks that we are actually. However I can’t overstate how joyful and therapeutic an expertise this was.”

However why did Dempsey depart Gray’s Anatomy within the first place? Scroll via a breakdown of the explanations behind the present’s greatest exits: