Ed Martin Live from the Television Critics Association Tour
Katherine Heigl on Denny's death and its impact on Izzie: "I hope [the writers] honestly and truthfully portray the aftermath of that tragedy."
Pasadena, CA - A crew member from Grey's Anatomy is leading a small group of television critics around the set of the
show when he stops outside a window and looks into a small fake hospital room.
"That's the room where Denny died," he says.
The critics, in unison, moan with sadness.
He escorts them around a corner and stops, pointing to fresh linoleum on the floor. "They had to put new flooring down
after the explosion," the crew member explains. "This is the spot where Kyle Chandler blew up."
Again, a chorus of oohs, aahs and sighs fills the set.
Members of the Television Critics Association, it seems, are every bit as emotionally invested in the show as ordinary fans, as
becomes increasingly clear throughout this visit to The Prospect Studios, where the show is filmed.
When last we left Grey's Anatomy, television's hottest team of sexy young doctors were at full sexual and emotional boil. There was much romantic anxiety permeating the hallways of Seattle
Grace Hospital, not to mention a couple of health and career crises thrown in for dramatic measure. The many questions left hanging at the end of the show's second season finale are lingering in the summer heat, driving critics and fans alike to distraction.
Who will Dr. McDreamy choose: Colleague and occasional lover Meredith or sexy wife Addison? Is it over for Meredith and kindly veterinarian Finn? Can Izzie put the shattered remains of her personal and
professional lives back together following her well-intentioned but career-destroying involvement in her beloved Denny's death ? Will Burke fully recover from that catastrophic gunshot wound?
Well instructed by series creator and executive producer Shonda Rhimes not to reveal even minor details about upcoming stories, the cast of the show wasn't particularly forthcoming with storyline spoilers
when the TCA membership stopped by. But most of them had interesting things to say anyway in the flurry of informal interviews that preceded the studio tour.
Asked if she had any knowledge of future storylines, series star Ellen Pompeo (Meredith Grey) replied, "I don't, really. I have so much to do I have to focus on the episode we're shooting." Of complaints co-star Patrick Dempsey made to some critics that his character (Derek) needs to toughen up and take
charge of his love life, Pompeo tactfully said, "I don't agree or disagree. I don't have an opinion." She was far more expressive, for a moment anyway, when asked about the move of her show to Thursdays at 9 p.m. opposite CBS' juggernaut CSI. "It's fantastic!" she cheered. Then she leveled off again. "I don't really think about it unless I'm asked."
The surging popularity of the show, Pompeo asserted, "hasn't really changed my life, except that I work a lot more." She
credits the show's mass appeal to the fact that "there are a lot of very different characters. Everyone can identify with one of them."
Dempsey was a bit more giving with the press. In addition to expressing his desire to have Derek step up and make a choice
between the women in his life, he revealed that the "first three shows of [the third] season will wrap up last season." That's called keeping a show fresh.
Katherine Heigl said she hopes the show "honestly and truthfully portrays the aftermath" of the "tragedy" of Denny's death. She'd like the show's writers to give Izzie "the time to move through it and decide what
she wants to do with her life. [In the second season finale Izzie quit the medical program after the loss of the man she loved.] If she doesn't come back to be a surgeon, I don't really know [what will happen]."
Asked about the unforgettable sequence in which Izzie crawled into Denny's hospital bed and quietly curled up next to his dead
body, Heigl said, "Her reaction was heartbreaking and raw. It was important to me that it not be melodramatic."
Sandra Oh was busily fielding questions about the show's move to Thursdays and her second Emmy nomination for her
portrayal of stubborn, forceful Cristina. Of the impending competition with CSI she said, "It's completely irrelevant to me," sounding a bit like her character. "I feel it has absolutely nothing to do with me. That's your job. The public is interested."
Questioned about her Emmy nomination, Oh replied, "I had no idea the Emmy nominations were coming. [July 6, the day the nominations were announced] was my first day of sleep after the play. [Oh had
been starring in the Off-Broadway play Satellites in New York City.] I slept until 11:30. It was fabulous! When I woke up I looked at my phone. I had like nine messages. It's really the best when you have no idea it's coming."
The utterly delightful Chandra Wilson, like Oh an Emmy nominee for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, was only too happy to show MediaVillage a mannequin lying on a nearby
operating table, soaked in artificial blood and with a bloody gaping hole in its abdomen. The mannequin is used to help block operating room sequences before they are filmed. Wilson spends a lot of time with this particular mannequin, she laughed, because her character, Dr. Miranda Bailey, "does a lot of intestinal surgeries."
Reminded that Grey's Anatomy is a show in which all of the characters are sleeping with someone else in the
hospital except for Dr. Bailey, Wilson rushed to her character's defense. "She's gettin' around!" Wilson declared. "She's just not doin' it nasty!"
Told by MediaVillage that her debut on the series had to be the biggest brief bang since the arrival of Alexis Carrington during the final few moments of the first-season cliffhanger on Dynasty, Kate
Walsh laughed. (Her character, Dr. Addison Shepherd, appeared during the last moments of the Grey's first-season finale to grievously compromise Meredith's relationship with Derek.)
"I got more calls after those 30 seconds than for anything else I've ever done," she said.
After recalling that she was only supposed to remain on the show for five episodes, Walsh was asked how Addie was
originally going to leave. "I don't know," she replied. "Sign the divorce papers and go?"
Though she arrived with the flair of a villainess, Addie has proven enormously popular with viewers, many of whom
sympathize with her. "Many people tell me they want Addison and Derek to be together," she said. Others "say they want Meredith and Derek to be together … but they want me to be happy, too!"
