Grey’s Anatomy hooked fans from the moment its pilot episode aired. Although medical shows like ER were abundant in the television world, Grey’s Anatomy offered a different approach to the sub-genre. However, the show dealt with a lot of behind-the-scenes controversy that showrunner Shonda Rhimes felt might’ve spelled the end of her series.
Shonda Rhimes still thinks about ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ most traumatic moment
Rhimes changed the television industry forever when she created Grey’s Anatomy. The series was known for its compelling characters and gripping storylines. Outside of the show’s quality, however, the series received additional praise for pushing boundaries when it came to diversity and representation onscreen. In an interview with Oprah, the showrunner revealed her fascination with surgery inspired her to bring the series to life.
“There’s something fascinating about the medical world—you see things you’d never imagine, like the fact that doctors talk about their boyfriends or their day while they’re cutting somebody open. So when ABC asked me to write another pilot, the OR seemed like the natural setting,” she said.
But after introducing Grey’s Anatomy to the world, there were several behind-the-scenes issues that plagued the set. The show’s former star, Isaiah Washington, risked tanking the show after he used a homophobic slur. At first, Rhimes figured the show’s executives and producers would be in charge of managing controversies like those. Then she quickly discovered that she had to learn how to deal with the show’s scandals on her own.
“If you are the creative brain, you not only have to share your brain with other people, but also everybody looks to you as the leader. I had to figure out how to be a great leader, and that took a while,” Rhimes said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Grey’s Anatomy would eventually weather the storm and continue to air on television to this day. But Rhimes shared that many of the cast and crew haven’t forgotten about the incident, especially when it came so close to ending the series.
“And it’s funny, every Grey’s actor I talk to who was there during that time is still traumatized by that incident. People still talk about it. So, that was the thorn. But I also think that there were so many roses that the thorn stopped mattering. I mean, that was the thing we thought was going to kill the show,” she said.
Why executives didn’t think anyone would watch ‘Grey’s Anatomy’
Rhimes confided that there were some who thought the series would be dead on arrival. The Inventing Anna showrunner and her creative partner, producer Betsy Beers, remembered discussing the show with a couple of older executives. But the executives didn’t agree with the direction the pair were taking some of the characters.
“I think they’d picked up Grey’s, though the chronology is always confusing, and we were sitting in a room with a lot of dudes, all dudes, and one dude in particular said, ‘This show, I don’t understand it. It’s just not relatable. I mean, it’s kind of appalling,’” Beers remembered. “Here’s this character, this woman, who goes out the night before her first day of her job, and she gets drunk and she sleeps with a stranger. What kind of woman would do that?’”
Beers showed the executives how wrong they were about the show when she revealed she was the type of woman to do that.
“And I raised my hand and I said, ‘Me. That was me.’ I told him I actually did exactly this and it might not have been at a hospital, but I went out the night before my first day at a job and I got drunk and slept with somebody. What I didn’t say to him was that I think I was drunk when I came to work,” she said.
