‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Showrunner Teases Season 21 As Cast Celebrates Medical Drama’s 20th Anniversary At D23

Katie Campione
·3 min read

Grey’s Anatomy returns next month, and showrunner Meg Marinis teased a bit of what to expect from Season 21 of the ABC medical drama during the series’ 20th anniversary celebration at D23 on Saturday.

“My favorite thing to do is to tie up our characters in the messiest knot possible in a finale, which I feel like we did pretty successfully,” she said. “We have doctors who do not have jobs, and we pick up pretty close to where we ended after the finale, and we’re gonna see how and if those doctors get their jobs back.”

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Marinis also suggested that Jason George’s Ben Warren will return to Grey Sloan quite swiftly, as the actor is rejoining the cast as a series regular following the cancellation of Station 19.

“It’s not going to be a super easy journey for him, but we’re excited to have him back at around Grey Sloan,” she explained.

As always, the season will have “some fun relationship” moments, which kick off in the premiere, as well as “some very fun event medical, very Grey’s Anatomy, shocking moments,” Marinis said, assuring fans: “I think you’re gonna be happy.”

Marinis was joined by stars Chandra Wilson, James Pickens Jr., Caterina Scorsone, Jason George, Kim Raver, Camilla Luddington, and Kevin McKidd at the panel where they took a trip down memory lane, starting with the pilot — which both Wilson and Pickens Jr. were around for.

“[At] a dinner one evening after the pilot had aired, Jim Parriott, who was one of our executive producers, he came over to me, he said, ‘Jim, I’m going to tell you something…This show is gonna hit like nothing no one has ever seen,'” Pickens Jr. remembered. “He was very prophetic, and our lives have never been the same.”

While not every actor on the panel had been there since day one, they’re all seasoned Grey’s cast members. One of the moments they all remembered was the real-life surgery they observed in preparation for their role.

Wilson says she was in the operating room to observe a five-month-old baby get a hole in her heart repaired before she took on the iconic role of Miranda Bailey, working her way from Chief Resident to Chief of Surgery.

“I got to be on the floor right there next to [her],” Wilson said. “I got to just stand there and watch this beautiful, beautiful, sort of bloodless procedure done in order to repair this baby girl so she can go on and live a good life.”

Raver joked that her procedure, which was an open heart surgery, was anything but bloodless — though it was helpful in preparing her to play a cardiothoracic surgeon.

“They had me standing above the patient’s head to see into the chest cavity,” she told the audience. “I remember being like, ‘Oh boy, I hope I don’t faint on this one. That would not be good.’ I did really well until they do the cauterizing of the skin. And then when that smell came up, I said, ‘I think I need to lean against the wall so I don’t faint.'”

Grey’s Anatomy Season 21 premieres September 26 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.

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