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When Krista Vernoff read the pilot’s screenplay for “Grey’s Anatomy” in 2004, she was stepping out of the “toughest job” of her television career, writing on “Wonderfalls.” In an interview for Variety’On the cover of “Grey’s Anatomy” for the magazine’s Power of Women issue, Vernoff said of the eccentric Fox drama: “I kept getting rewritten over and over again. It was the only time in my career that happened, but it was humbling and important for me to live.
But Vernoff knew she would be a perfect fit for “Grey’s Anatomy”.
“I feel like I wrote this script in a feverish dream,” she recalls telling her agent after reading Shonda Rhimes’ ABC pilot. “I have that voice. I need to meet this woman.
Vernoff ended up becoming the show’s chief writer for its first seven seasons. She returned for season 14 as a showrunner, anointed by Rhimes and endorsed by star Ellen Pompeo to take over after a series of cast releases and sad storylines clouded the tone of the sassy medical drama. As “Grey’s Anatomy” nears its Season 17 premiere on November 12, filming under real-life COVID-19 protocols and tackling the coronavirus onscreen, Vernoff reflected on the show to his debut, writing the character of Alex Karev and why the “Gray” characters feel like friends.
Can you talk about the writers room in the early days of the show? Were certain writers responsible for writing particular characters?
Everyone should be able to write each character. The show had a very high energy, because we had a lot of theater people – a lot of passionate, funny and intelligent people. And we were jumping and arguing like we were the characters. I remember fighting like I was Meredith, fighting like Izzie – Tony [Phelan] would fight for Derek’s point of view. There were men in that room who said, “The Men have a point of view!
How did medical histories work back then?
We had Zoanne Clack in the writers’ room, who was still an emergency doctor at the time. We had a medical researcher. And we had [surgical nurse] Linda Klein on set. The medical researcher would send us all the articles in the world – any miraculous thing that was ever removed by a surgeon, ever. Every kind of crazy accident that caused terrible damage to a human was our homework at night.
The joke that wasn’t really a joke is up to, “Can’t they be beheaded at the scene and have their heads sewn up?” And Zoanne would just look at us and yell at us, quietly brood over us and say, “No! It can’t happen!
The rule at the beginning was that it had to happen at least once somewhere in the world for us to be able to stage it. The drug had to be precise.
How has the uproar among the cast – which prompted the earlier than expected departures of Isaiah Washington, TR Knight, and Katherine Heigl – affected the writers?
Of course some of these things radically changed the story plans. When we learn that an actor is leaving the series, and that you have scripted, it’s a marriage …
Katie’s departure changed the course of Alex-Izzie’s love story quite abruptly. One of the things about working on TV and being a TV writer is that you have to be able to pivot. You don’t have to like to pivot, but you better be prepared to throw it all in and work all night on a completely different story by the 11th hour.
It’s the truth; that was work. There was a lot of drama. There was a lot of on-screen drama and off-screen drama, and young people were navigating intense stardom for the first time in their lives. I think a lot of these actors, if they could go back in time and talk to their younger ones, that would be a different thing. Everyone has grown, changed and evolved – but it was an intense time.
My job was to do my best to make it look like good intentional storytelling.
Speaking of actors who quit abruptly, can you talk about Justin Chambers leaving?
It’s just not my story to tell.
But how did you get the deliciously outlandish idea that he left all his life – including his wife, Jo – for Izzie?
It evolved from a conversation in the writers’ room of, “Look, what’s a satisfying way to say goodbye to this character?” What we knew was that we didn’t want to kill him. Jo had only gone through a massive depression following “Silent All These Years”. She had just left.
She had fair passed through.
She had just gotten out of it! And the actress [Camilla Luddington] must have played so much sorrow. And Ellen in her lifetime on the show must have played therefore a lot of grief. Grief is really, really, really hard on the actors. I understand that is their job. But when you have to play sustained heartbreak episode after episode after episode – I’ve never met an actor who hasn’t gone into his own depression because he has to get those chemicals through his system.
In addition to not wanting to put the actors in sustained mourning, I did not want characters through another sustained grief. And that was probably the most important thing. I don’t want Meredith Gray to die Alex Karev. I don’t want to see it! I can not support it!
And I didn’t want the public to go through it. This character was so sacred. It was therefore sacred. And the collective grief in this world and in this country right now is pretty intense.
So how do you write this character? Well, the fabric was fully sewn – they were part of the story. Jo had found [out about the embryos] – that had been a great fear. And Izzie was gone when Alex was very much in love with her. And yes, he had said, “I deserve better than you”, but it was rooted in his pain. And that was something that we had to write down quite abruptly at the time that didn’t feel quite true. So it was, like, “Oh, wait a minute – there’s a way to bring this whole circle back.”
For us, what has motivated Alex Karev as a character his entire life is the desire for an intact family. A craving for sanity was a craving for pancake breakfasts – like, he wanted a childhood that nothing in his life had ever given him. And Yes, he had Jo now. And Yes, it was a beautiful love story. And Yes, for many years while writing them, I thought they were late game. And so I understood why to some people it felt like a betrayal of this character’s development.
Yes.
But also if you watch episode 16.01, Alex almost didn’t pick up Jo from the mental institution she had checked in. He almost didn’t look for her! Women in mental health crisis have been the bane of his existence all his life. So that he would go find out that Izzie had these beautiful and beautiful children that were his, and that she was stable now, and here is that farm and these children and this joy and this thing that he never, ever has. of his life imagined he would – it felt like a happy ending to this character, even though it caused him tremendous pain. Even if it caused this brutal and shocking breakup.
And one of the things that I have known and believed and experienced in my life is that sometimes someone comes into your life to help you heal. And then once you’re healed, you don’t resonate together anymore. Alex and Jo are doing so well. She went and was hospitalized and gained coping skills that she had never had before. They healed themselves!
Then Alex went to find out this something else, and he couldn’t leave. And it seemed true. And it was fair. And it felt good for our writers, who also grew up with these characters. These people are also real to us. And that was how we could say goodbye to Alex. And that’s the biggest answer I’ve given on this, Kate!
Yes, what is the level of consciousness of how – after watching “Grey’s Anatomy” for so many years – these characters are people In our lifes?
I am very aware of this. I remember when “Friends” was in its senior year, I was talking to a friend of mine who didn’t watch the show about Phoebe, Rachel, and Joey. And I kept on some length. And my girlfriend looked at me and nodded and said, “You understand that these people are not really your friends, do you?” And I looked at her, and I thought, “No. They were my friends. The “Friends” were my friends. “
I think that’s true for people who grew up with characters they love on TV. I survived my childhood thanks to books. I want to say that literally.
So yeah, I’m aware of the impact these fictional characters have on fans. And I don’t know if there has ever been anything like these characters, who have been on the air for 17 seasons. The other shows that have been around this long are more procedural-oriented.
One of the things that makes these characters so important to people is that we’ve looked at their lives, their loves, and their friendships. We have seen them get married, divorced, widowed and have children. It feels very real, very powerful and deep. And I understand that!
This interview has been edited and condensed. To read the Variety cover article on “Grey’s Anatomy”, click here. Watch the wedeo de Pompeo, Debbie Allen, Chandra Wilson and Vernoff filmed for Power of Women Conversations, click here. To read an interview with Pompeo, click here. To read a story about the show’s set this season during the coronavirus pandemic, click here.
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