What kind of reaction have you seen today about the finale, and is it what you were expecting?
I haven’t really seen anything. I knew that I had really strong feelings about the finale, and I knew people would too. I decided I was just going to be off of Twitter. I know that there was a large reaction. The one thing that I wanted to know is if everybody got the point of the episode. Everyone is still so immersed in ‘Who died?’ and no one is talking about the thing that I actually think is important and was the point of the episode.
Which is?
Which is they are still out there. They’re still out there in the forest, and we don’t know if they are going to be OK. We left it open for a reason because…I hate to say this, but just because you saw people alive at the end of the finale doesn’t mean they’re going to be alive when the season starts up. We are completely jumping off into the unknown next season.
Did you know who was going to be back next season when you wrote the finale?
I had another cliffhanger planned and written, two actually, that reflected me not knowing what was going to happen next season. And literally up until the day before the table read, I was taking this whole thing apart and putting it back together. But by the time we got to the day before the table read, I then knew what was going to be happening with the contract negotiations, which turned the tables.
I know you put the statement out on Twitter, but is there anything more you can say about why Chyler is leaving the show?
I think that’s…Stuff that happens inside our family is stuff that happens inside our family. I have so much respect for Chyler, and the decision was really, it was very hard for everybody involved and I want to respect her privacy on that.
When did you know for sure Chyler was going to leave?
The only thing I knew when I started writing the finale was that Chyler was leaving the finale. That was the only information I knew.
How did the cast find out Chyler was getting killed off?
At the table read. It was really, really emotional. Chyler Leigh and I were the only people who knew what was coming for her character. Kim Raver and I were the only ones who knew what was coming for that character. Chyler and I had been discussing it for months.
Fans have been asking this morning if there’s any way Lexie (Chyler) could still come back. They don’t even care if it’s totally implausible. “Can’t she come back as a ghost? Or it was a dream?”
We saw Denny as a ghost, and people didn’t really like that, did they? It was a really hard decision to let that character die versus send her off into the sunset somewhere. It was really difficult. It was not made lightly. I don’t think we’re going to see Lexie Grey ever again. That’s not the intention, to see her again. It’s a big loss. It’s a big loss for the characters and it’s a big loss for the show. We’re busy feeling that loss.
Did you have other plans for Mark and Lexie? Is that why their final words to each other were “meant to be?”
Yes. Honestly, I always felt like Mark and Lexie were meant to be together. If things had not turned out the way they had this season, I had a completely different thing planned for them. I was one of the people who loved Mark and Lexie together; I had a completely different thing planned for them. The introduction of Julie was part of planning a completely different storyline for them. So for me, there was a lot of heartbreak in that. There were so many moments and so many things that I had wanted to happen with those characters that we’re never going to get to see. When Mark and Lexie say “meant to be,” it wasn’t about servicing the fans. That’s how I felt. That’s what was supposed to happen, and that’s what I wanted to see. It was heartbreaking.
So when Mark tells Lexie as she’s dying that they are supposed to get married and have kids and be happy together, were those your thoughts, too?
Those absolutely were my thoughts. I loved the idea of them together. They played really well together. They were very charming and funny and great. We did the scene where Lexie confesses to Mark that she’s still in love with him. That was bittersweet to me because it was like, “Look, they’re so close, so close! And yet so far.”
Any chance Kim Raver will be back at some point?
I don’t think that’s a possibility that has been ruled out. At least not by me. I love Kim. I say to my partner Betsy [Beers] every once in a while, “We could do a series that’s just Med Com.” It could just be a Med Com series. I love Kim; she’s amazing. I don’t know. I think maybe it’d be cool one day if she could come back. We’ll see.
Is this episode the hardest thing you’ve ever written?
Yes, in a weird way, because of several things. One, I didn’t like it, in the sense that right up until the last minute I kept saying, “Maybe they shouldn’t get in a plane.” I kept trying to come up with something different. My writers were so great, and they were like, “We’re all 100 percent behind the idea!” They will tell you I say that every year at finale time. I turn around and say we should do something different. And then I write it and it’s fine. Usually I question it right up to the table read, but then I’m fine. This one, I questioned it while we were shooting it and I questioned it once I saw the edit for it. And then once we got to the soundstage, literally Tuesday, I’m watching the show and I’m changing music at the last minute.
Why?
Because it’s so unsettling at the end. I think there’s something very unsatisfying about the way that it ends for everyone. I like the ride. Doing the shooting episode was really great because while it was gut-wrenching and hard to do, I knew who was OK. And in this, we don’t know who’s OK. We still don’t totally know who’s OK. There’s still choices to be made. It is very unsettling for me, and the idea of leaving my Meredith and my Cristina in the wilderness without a match, chewing half a stick of gum each, having each other, while beautiful, was really painful.
Ellen Pompeo and Sandra Oh did incredible work in this episode.
The things that those two women did were amazing. I would like to point out that Ellen Pompeo had like three broken toes while running through that forest! Some silly home accident and she broke her foot like two days before we started shooting that finale. She had three broken toes, and Sandra Oh had to run around in really cold weather with one shoe. And Jessica Capshaw is nine months pregnant. It was not an easy shoot. I thought that Sandra and Ellen were amazing. I mean, I thought they all were, but they did great work.
Do you know where the show will pick up next season?
I do know where we are going to pick up next season. But I’m not going to talk about it.
Any final words to the fans before you go on radio silence again?
I don’t know. I feel like everyone has the right to have the reaction that they want to have. I think part of the reason why I am staying away from the reaction is I fully get that this is an unsatisfying finale. And it was unsatisfying for me, too. I enjoyed the boldness of it. I enjoyed saying yeah, we are going to put our doctors on a plane, and yeah, we’re going to crash the plane. Which is insane and makes no sense. And yeah, we’re going to have them in the forest, and we’re going to kill Lexie in act two because that’s not what you do in a finale. I enjoyed subverting expectation. Everyone was watching to see where everyone ended up, and we’re not going to tell you where everyone ends up. I really thought that that was great. I have to focus on what happens next, and paying attention to fan reaction or going online to see what everyone has to say about it is pretty much paying attention to what happened before, and that does not actually help me at this point.

WHOOHOO!

Big news for Grey’s Anatomy fans. I’ve learned that all original cast members whose future on the ABC medical drama had been up in the air amid contract negotiations, have re-upped for two more seasons. That includes Ellen Pompeo, Patrick Dempsey, Sandra Oh, Justin Chambers as well as James Pickens, Jr. and Chandra Wilson.

With the uncertainty surrounding the core quartet, Grey’s Anatomy creator-showrunner Shonda Rhimes had written the upcoming eighth season finale in a way that would leave the door open for them potentially departing Seattle Grace. The new contracts with Pompeo, Dempsey, Oh, Chambers, Pickens Jr. and Wilson  pave the way forGrey’s to be renewed for a ninth season, something that already was all but guaranteed

You’d think starring on one of TV’s hottest shows would keep you busy enough, but Patrick Dempsey is a man on a mission.

When the Grey’s Anatomy starisn’t otherwise occupied saving lives, both on TV and in real life, he’s also doing what he can to help fight cancer.

Sigh… no wonder they call him McDreamy!

Dempsey called into Mornings with Carson Daly today to chat about his exciting Grey’s Anatomy news and the AMGEN Tour of California bike race.

Just yesterday, news broke that Dempsey, along with his co-stars Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, and Justin Chambers, all recently re-newed their contracts to return for two more seasons. Carson asked Dempsey how he feels about the new deal:

“It’s just so nice to have a job and it continues on as a wonderful thing, so, very grateful that it’s happening. You know, very happy to have all the negotiations done and to move forward and looking forward to another couple of years of the show.”

This means Dr. Derek Shepherd will be gracing our television screens through the tenth season and when asked if the series will end after that, Dempsey had this to say:

“I would imagine, I think so. We’ll see how we feel at the end of two years, but that’s been a long run…It’s been incredible and hopefully with this next two years we can infuse some new life into the show and I know there are a lot of interesting things coming up on the last two episodes that I think will be quite moving for people.”

The uncertainties that swirl around the residents as the show heads into its season finale are numerous — and delicious — to contemplate. Last week, they took their boards, cheered when they passed (well, most of them did), and now face decisions about the future. Luckily, off screen, the recent contract talks with the major cast members give a little hint as to what the future holds for some hallmark characters.

But where’s it all really headed? Prior to the news about cast contracts (Rhimes is not allowed to comment) EW took a call with executive producer and creator Rhimes to chat about what’s to come:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I know this finale caused you a lot of strife, so tell me about that.
SHONDA RHIMES: We’ve been working with a lot of uncertainty this season. And part of working with that uncertainty was figuring out how we were going to tell the story in an interesting way. What was really natural and lovely was the idea that our residents are sort of ‘graduating’ to become attendings. And in the episode right before the finale, you’re really finding out what people are choosing to do — what jobs they’re choosing to take and how they’re choosing to spend the next year of their lives. That was a really interesting and fun and ultimately, for me, really nostalgic story to tell, watching these people who started off as little baby interns becoming attendings and surgical fellows.

Chandra Wilson [who plays Dr. Bailey] said something similar, that it was like watching ducklings growing up.
It really is. Throughout the episode, there’s this very overwhelming sense of nostalgia. The babies are leaving the nest and that’s amazing. And in the penultimate episode, you discover what everyone’s fate is going to be in terms of what jobs they’re taking and whether they’re going to stay or go. And then the finale happens, and everything gets turned on its ear a little bit.

So, speaking of the finale, we know there’s a death…
I almost regret saying anything about it at all, but when I did those [first] interviews, I’d literally just finished writing the script the day before, and the [Grey’s] writers sat around and did a writers’ table read the day before. I was very much in it. But my feeling is, it was really hard to write. I knew we were coming to this place and to this story and to this episode, and I had been dreading it for months, literally. I’d been putting it off and getting to the point where it was like, ‘You have four days to write the episode. You’ve got to write the episode.’ But I didn’t want to do it or face it in a lot of ways. I was kind of hoping that there could be a different outcome. If I waited long enough, maybe the outcome would be different, and yet, it wasn’t. We had to write the episode. If I step back and look at it from the outside, I think it’s going to be a very painful and shocking episode for people. From the inside, it’s a very painful and shocking episode. It’s not anything that you expect, and it doesn’t have any of the resolutions that you expect. And the reason why I wanted to say something about it before it came out is because I wanted people to be prepared. I felt like it was unnecessarily cruel for you to think that everything was going to move along happily. I wanted people to be prepared for the idea that something bad is going to happen.

Since you did compare it to the shooting, is it more of the emotional equivalent or the bloodshed equivalent?
I think both.

Let’s talk Derek and Meredith. Patrick has said that he feels they can survive anything at this point. Accurate?
I do feel like they’re a very grown-up couple in the sense that they’ve been through more than enough dark times. And definitely are in a place where they’re committed to one another. Their relationship is not the question — at all. I always think it’s interesting, I get these tweets from people asking if I’m going to break them up. And I keep saying their relationship and love for one another is not going to be the question.

…

So final warning to fans about the finale?
I think it’s going to be hard to watch. I think there are going to be some aspects of this that are going to be very hard to watch, and I think there are going to be some moments that are fairly stunning in terms of people wanting to throw things at their television set or at me. But I did what I had to do. I did what was necessary in order to tell the story that we needed to tell and tell it in the way we needed to tell us and to take us into next season the way we needed to be led there. I really hope the fans recognize what we were trying to do with this episode. These articles end up torturing the fans and this episode is not intended to torture the fans. This episode is intended to tell a specific kind of story in a specific kind of way.

I think it only refers to mer cris and Alex because i.e usually signifies ‘that is’. :( I’m really worried about Derek too! I think that he’s somewhat safe though, since he’d been through a near death experience in season 6 finale. Or else people would start showing up at shonda’s with guns. Haha :)

Any hints about the big death in the Grey’s Anatomy finale?
Ausiello: The Originals (i.e. Meredith, Cristina, Alex) are safe. Ditto Bailey.

Could you pleeeease give us a clue about who dies on Grey’s Anatomy? I’m losing my mind here!
Ausiello: I can also rule out Jackson. And Mark.

“Faced with a life threatening situation, the doctors must fight to stay alive while trying to save the lives of their peers; Bailey and Ben make a decision regarding their relationship; and Teddy is presented with a tempting offer. Meanwhile, Richard plans a special dinner for the residents.”

With only a handful of episodes remaining in the show’s eighth season, Grey’s creator Shonda Rhimes has set up a season finale that manages to service the tricky predicament facing ABC’s top-rated drama.

With the future of core cast members including Ellen Pompeo, Patrick Dempsey, Sandra Oh andJustin Chambers up in the air amid contract negotiations, the prolific showrunner has crafted a finale that is different from its previous seven efforts with the doctors, now residents, potentially departing the hospital for greener pastures. In addition, the May 17 season finale will spell the demise for a main character when a mysterious big event will put the docs in peril

The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Rhimes to discuss the impact the challenging episode will have, address the future for the show’s core couples — Meredith has her sights set on Boston, while Cristina has the pick of the lot — and how everything could play out in the expected ninth season. (While Grey’s hasn’t been renewed yet, it is considered a sure thing to earn a renewal in the coming weeks.)

We’ve heard there’s a big death in the finale. Could it be a character that affects the heart and soul of Seattle Grace? How big of a death is it?
It’s a pretty big death. We’re not talking [about] some guest star [who] is going to come in and die kind of thing; it’s a big death and it’s fairly shocking. It was hard, it was hard to write, it was hard to listen to at the table read. It is a difficult thing to do and not done lightly. When one of your main characters dies, it always affects the heart and soul of the hospital.

Compared to some of the previous finales that we’ve seen — i.e. the hospital shooting — where does this year’s rank?
I don’t know how to compare it. The shooting episode was done for a number of reasons; ultimately the point of it was to leave our entire group of people fresh, like naked babies in a weird way, in terms of being in an operating room and starting over. The intention of this episode is we’re literally saying goodbye to people — and possibly more than one person. In a weird way for me — and I don’t know if it will be this way for viewers — it was much more painful than the shooting episode because there’s something final about this, whereas the shooting episode felt like a journey that we were going through and then you came out the other side when it was over. You don’t come out of the other side of this. Where we leave the end of the season is a little bit crazy. I kept saying to people, “This feels exactly like what should be happening, but it feels a little bit crazy.” But it does feel like where we should be in that moment.

You mentioned saying goodbye to more than one person — could we potentially see more than one death?
As we leave our season, we will have already seen a death, and there will be some lives in jeopardy.

How did you approach writing the finale with so much uncertainty about the future of the core cast?
I’ve been thinking about it since the beginning of the season: what we were going to do not necessarily knowing what was going on with the originals. Every other season I’ve had, I’ve started literally by pitching the finale to the writers so that we all know exactly where we are going as we head down the season’s road. This year, we couldn’t do that. It was difficult; it was a big process. This is a very different episode than we’ve ever done on our show and it’s not necessarily different for what exactly happens, although that is different. It’s different for the way things unfold and they we leave things with our characters. 

How will the remaining episodes walk the line between writing characters out while still leaving the door open for their return should contract talks work out?
We have a very clear plan for what is going to happen next season. I already know how next season is going to lay out. Part of that plan doesn’t necessarily mean that just because the doctor decides not return to Seattle Grace, it does not necessarily mean the doctor is not going to be on the show anymore.

Could we potentially see the show take place from two cities?
I’m not even going to speculate.

Given your writing process, have you already thought about next season’s finale?
No, not yet, not even close. I don’t even want to begin thinking about that until we start talking about next season and we won’t start talking about next season until June.

Is there a connection between the title of this episode, “Flight,” and the penultimate hour in Season 2, “Deterioration of the Fight or Flight Response”?
I did think of “Deterioration of the Fight or Flight Response” when I titled this episode “Flight.” This title is attached to the title before it, which is “Migrations.” It’s also about our little babies taking their wings and flying. There’s a lot of meaning behind the title. There’s many, many meanings behind the title.

Care to address speculation that the title references a plane crash?
I don’t.

Meredith’s first choice is Boston’s program. How can we expect to see Derek deal with that?
Things take a fairly surprising turn in that Derek gets excited about Boston. It’s near his family; Harvard is going to offer him the world. He begins to see that it is a very real possibility for the two of them.

After years of building toward their dream life in the McMansion, Meredith and Derek are mulling leaving Seattle just as viewers are getting to see it completed. What does that do for the show?
That’s kind of the point. Seeing the house at this point in time is really the moment in which they are trying to decide whether they’re going to stay or go. You get to see the one room, the great room of the house, it’s quite lovely, and it was really nice that they allowed us to build it considering we don’t know what’s going to happen to it next season. It was important to show that and to show them at this moment in time, when in a weird way, they have everything. 

How will Owen and Cristina struggle with her potential departure?
We’ve been very clear that everybody wants Cristina Yang. It’s always been my intention that we portray that character as being extraordinarily gifted as a surgeon, and this is her moment where she’s being offered the world from a number of different places. We’re going to see her make a decision and see her try to decide what to do. For me, the thing that was most emotional was the prospect of Meredith and Cristina being split up. Yes, I think Cristina and Owen being split up would be a very difficult thing. But the idea that Meredith and Cristina were going to be split up — that the twisted sisters were no longer going to be in the same place — that’s a prospect that they’re all facing as they are looking at all of these different jobs in all these different places.

What do you think will happen in the finale? Which character do you think is going to be killed off? Hit the comments. Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 9 p.m.

Source: Keck’s Exclusives

Grey’s Anatomy’s executive producer Shonda Rhimes has confirmed to me exclusively that a beloved character will die in the ABC drama’s May 17 season finale. “A lot of our writers were crying, which is a very rare thing,” she says. “There’s some really shocking, horrible moments.”

It can’t be worse than the bloodshed two years ago when a crazed gunman hunted the doctors like animals, can it? “Yeah, it is,” says Rhimes. “People’s mettle is going to be tested.”

Writing the episode, she adds, was sheer “torture… I’ve been sitting with my head in my hands for days. I understand the choice I made, but it scares me how fans are going to react.”

Fans began voicing their concern when Rhimes recently tweeted a quote from author Kurt Vonnegut: “Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” Yikes! The ominous quote, Rhimes says, was just what she needed to give her “the courage to do what we’re doing in the finale.”

The heart-stopping drama begins in the May 10 episode with “a big case that takes a group of our people out of the hospital. It’s sort of the medical case of their lives,” says Rhimes, hinting that the patient could possibly be one of their own.

That episode will also give us our first glimpse of Derek and Meredith’s completed dream house. While Rhimes originally planned for the season to end with the couple watching in horror as their new home burned to the ground, she says, “I was not ready to do that.”

Instead, the dream house is being constructed and is “quite beautiful. I feel like this is the moment for it, since Meredith and Derek are having a debate about their future. I just hope we can use it next season.”

While she’s keeping much of the finale secret, Rhimes does offer a few specifics. Fans can look forward to some “extraordinarily romantic Ben and Dr. Bailey stuff,” with Bailey making a decision “that will fundamentally change her life.”

And keenly aware that “Mark and Lexie fans have been very adamant about them getting back together, they’ll have some very beautiful moments with one another that I hope the fans are going to really love,” Rhimes says.

Cristina will continue to struggle with the fact that she is “a gifted, talented surgeon first, before being Owen’s wife,” while Alex will struggle with a decision he’s made. Adds, Rhimes, “We watch Alex have a really lovely moment where we discover how much he’s grown up this season.”

Curiously, Rhimes said there was nothing she could reveal about Callie and Arizona’s storyline in the finale, which frankly has me worried.

And what of Meredith and Derek’s future? After repeatedly saying she didn’t know the status of Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey’s contracts for next season, Rhimes now says she’s not allowed to discuss the matter. And by the end of the finale, viewers may still not be entirely clear as to who will and won’t return.

“We sort of end with our breaths held,” she teases. “It’s a great moment. We were joking in the writers’ room that if this was the series finale we’d be good to go. But we’ve been told very clearly it’s not.”

Did Rhimes have to write one of the “nightmare scenarios” she told me about a year ago, should she lose one of her core actors? “This was born out of a nightmare scenario,” she confirms, but then it turned out “to not necessarily be the nightmare scenario that I thought it was going to have to be.”

Rhimes’ hope is that the outcome of the actors’ contracts will remain secret until the finale airs. And she does offer one bit of encouragement. After killing off T.R. Knight’s George in 2009, she believes “there are certain characters on this show that you can’t kill. It wouldn’t be acceptable not only to the audience, but to me and my vision of what this show is. They can’t die.”

Yet, at least one will soon be eulogized. “The lives of our people should be a concern,” Rhimes says. “A lot of choices are made in this episode that change people’s futures forever.”