Grey’s Anatomy on-set controversy. Created by Shonda Rhimes, Grey’s Anatomy premiered on ABC in 2005 as a mid-season replacement, but it was so well-received by critics and viewers that it has lived on for over 15 seasons. Even though the quality of the show has decreased over the years, Grey’s Anatomy continues to be quite popular, and not even the many controversies it has gone through have stopped it.
Following the basic premise of medical dramas, Grey’s Anatomy centers on the lives of surgical interns, residents, and attendings as they struggle to balance their professional and personal lives, which often overlap and create a lot of drama inside and outside the hospital. Grey’s Anatomy is led by Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), who viewers have seen go from intern to Director of the Residency Program at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. Through Meredith, viewers have also met a variety of characters – some closer to her than others – of which many are no longer part of the hospital’s staff, and in most cases, their departures were surrounded by controversy.
Life on the set of Grey’s Anatomy is not what it seems, and the show has been involved in various controversies of all kinds for years, directly affecting the fates of some characters and even damaging the relationship of some actors with their co-stars and even with Shonda Rhimes herself. Here’s a timeline of every on-set controversy Grey’s Anatomy has gone through.
2005 – Grey’s Anatomy Casting Controversy
Controversy around Grey’s Anatomy quietly began before the show aired, but wasn’t known until years later. Speaking to Tavis Smiley’s podcast (via the role of Derek Shepherd, but was paid $10,000 not to take the audition “or do any television”, so he took the money… but he still auditioned for it as he wanted to play “the highest level of my intellect and build my brand”. Washington was called back and read with Ellen Pompeo, who according to him made “the executive decision” to not have him play Derek as she “had a black boyfriend, [and] she didn’t feel comfortable”, adding that she told him so at catering once he was already on the show playing Dr. Preston Burke.
In 2013, Pompeo talked about this saying that Rhimes wanted to “put a black man in the mix” and have her character paired with Washington’s, but an interracial couple on the show was “too close to home” and she “didn’t want him”, instead choosing “that Dempsey kid”. On that same conversation at Tavis Smiley’s podcast, Washington shared that he wasn’t well-received on the set of Grey’s Anatomy, explaining that during a table read, Peter Horton (who directed the pilot episode) told him “I thought we got rid of you”, while Dempsey exclaimed “what is he doing here?”.
2006, 2007 – Isaiah Washington vs Patrick Dempsey
Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of a series of controversies on the set of Grey’s Anatomy, and Isaiah Washington was at the center of many of them during the first years of the series. In October 2006, reports began to surface about on-set tension between Washington and Dempsey, which quickly escalated when Washington reportedly used a homophobic slur during an argument with Dempsey (an incident that Katherine Heigl initially downplayed as “a little burst of testosterone in the room”). It was later reported that the homophobic slur was directed at co-star T.R. Knight, and this later led to Knight publicly coming out in January 2007. Washington apologized in an official statement but controversy was reignited when he commented on the issue during the Golden Globes later that month, where he denied using such words, with Heigl telling Access Hollywood that her co-star “needs to just not speak in public, period”. That comment from Heigl continues to be a source of conflict between her and Washington.
As for the argument between Washington and Dempsey, the former told during an appearance on Larry King Live in 2007 that he didn’t use a homophobic slur in reference to Knight and simply blurted it out in an unrelated context during an argument provoked by Dempsey, who he felt wasn’t treating him right. Washington added that Dempsey’s lateness was what sparked their fight, and what sent Dempsey off was when Washington said he “didn’t need Ellen” because “he can act”.
2007 – Isaiah Washington Left Grey’s Anatomy
In June 2007, after all the above controversy, ABC decided not to renew Washington’s contract and so he left Grey’s Anatomy. Unlike many other characters, Dr. Burke wasn’t killed off but he did leave his mark as one of the most cold-hearted characters as he left Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) on their wedding day and was sent to Switzerland. However, Burke was brought back in 2014 for Yang’s last episode, as he offered his former fiancée his spot at the Klausman Institute for Medical Research so he could move to Milan with his wife. Rhimes defended her decision to bring Burke back explaining that her “first decision and her first responsibility is to the story”, adding that they all love Washington and that if people don’t think that people can change “over the course of seven years [...] then there really is no future for the human race at all”.
2008 – Katherine Heigl’s Emmy Withdrawal
Grey’s Anatomy and its cast have won various awards over the years, and in 2007, Katherine Heigl won an Emmy for Outstanding ing Actress in a Drama Series thanks to her role as Izzie Stevens, but the following year she withdrew herself from the race as she didn’t believe her character’s storyline was good enough for a nomination. Although she later tried to explain what she truly meant with that, Rhimes told Oprah Winfrey that she wasn’t surprised at Heigl’s attitude and “when people show you who they are, believe them”, and that was the beginning of a lot of rumors about what the writers were planning for Izzie Stevens and Heigl’s on-set behavior.
2009 – T.R. Knight Left Grey’s Anatomy
In 2009, a character very close to Meredith left the show in one of the most heartbreaking stories: George returned in Grey’s Anatomy season 17 as part of Meredith’s COVID-19-induced dreams.
2010 – Katherine Heigl Left Grey’s Anatomy
The next Grey’s Anatomy actor to leave the show was Katherine Heigl, who did so in 2010. After the above-mentioned controversy after her Emmy withdrawal, reports on her being “difficult to work with”, and more, Heigl requested to be released from her contract 18 months earlier, explaining that she wanted to spend more time with her family. The solution for Izzie was to move her out of Seattle to start a new life (but she sent divorce papers to Alex Karev, of course), and her arc didn’t come to a proper end until Alex’s did, as he left his partner, Jo, to move to Seattle with Izzie, who had twins, who were also Alex’s.
2015 – Patrick Dempsey Left Grey’s Anatomy
Fans of Grey’s Anatomy were hit with another devastating departure when Patrick Dempsey’s Derek Shepherd was killed off in season 11. On his way back to DC, Derek got into a car accident, and after a lot of complications, he couldn’t be saved and Meredith decided to remove him from life . In an interview with People in 2016, Dempsey shared it had been “long enough” and it was time for him to move on, adding he should have done so “a couple of years earlier” and that he “stayed a bit longer” than he should have. Dempsey later shared that the main reason for him to decide to leave was that it was too time-consuming, not allowing him to spend time with his family.
However, in the book How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy, by Lynette Rice, former executive producers James D. Parriott and Jeannine Renshaw talked about Dempsey’s on-set behavior and didn’t paint him in a good light. Meredith saw at the beach.
2015 – Ellen Pompeo vs Denzel Washington
In 2015, Denzel Washington directed Grey’s Anatomy season 12’s episode “The Sound of Silence”, but according to Ellen Pompeo, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. In the debut episode of her podcast Tell Me (via Grey’s Anatomy, recalling one scene where she offered direction to a co-star. According to Pompeo, the other’s character had to apologize to Meredith but made the choice to “speak very softly”, which didn’t sit well with her as he “wasn’t looking at her in the eye”. Pompeo yelled at him and told him “look at me when you apologize. Look at me”, which wasn’t on the script. This led Denzel Washington to remind her that he was the director and to “not tell him what to do”, to which she replied “listen m****rf****r, this is my show. This is my set. Who are you telling?”.
2015 – Grey’s Anatomy Contract Negotiations
In an interview with THR in 2018, Ellen Pompeo revealed that she reached out to Dempsey to negotiate their contracts together, referring to his departure as a “defining moment, deal-wise” as he could be (and ultimately was) used as leverage against her under the excuse of “we don’t need you, we have Patrick”. Unfortunately, Dempsey wasn’t open nor interested in negotiating his contract alongside her, so Pompeo continued to fight for it on her own, eventually becoming the highest-paid actress on TV. Pompeo also shared that it was “a long working relationship and it was a tumultuous end", and needed some time off to decompress after Dempsey left the show.
2018 – Ellen Pompeo, Patrick Dempsey, & The #MeToo Movement
During the above-mentioned conversation with the Tavis Smiley’s podcast, Isaiah Washington also revealed that Ellen Pompeo took “hush money” from unnamed parties so she wouldn’t reveal “how toxic and nasty Patrick Dempsey really was”, this as the #MeToo movement started to rise – and after that, Pompeo signed the deal that turned her into the highest-paid actress on TV. Of course, Pompeo hasn’t commented on this, and unfortunately, controversy might not end for Grey’s Anatomy until the show comes to an end, or maybe not even then.