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Ellen Pompeo Explains How 'Grey's Anatomy' Characters' Fates Are Decided


Onscreen, nobody does karma like Shonda Rhimes, and apparently, this extends off set as well. This week, Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo sat down with Entertainment Tonight to talk about the departures of actors Sarah Drew and Jessica Capshaw from the show. In the interview, she also spilled some interesting details about how the writers decide who to kill off and how. “You only get killed off when your behavior is bad,” Pompeo told ET. “If you’re a nice actor, you die nice.”

Knowing this, it’s pretty easy to make some deductions about certain members of the Grey’s Anatomy cast. Rhimes has killed off 15 major characters on the show so far. It’s not clear what exactly counts as “dying nice,” so we’ll separate the deaths into three distinct categories: Good, Neutral, and Awful. (However, take all these with a grain of salt; they’re just our opinions about these deaths. For all we know, the actors who died “Awful” deaths on the show might’ve been awesome on set.)

Of the Good deaths, we have Ellis Grey (Kate Burton), who, in death, saves Meredith’s life as she wakes her up from the afterlife; Adele Webber (Loretta Devine), who dies offscreen and gets mourned by Richard and Meredith at Bailey’s wedding; Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh), who dies with everyone acknowledging that she and Mark Sloan were meant to be together (ignore the plane crash); and Mark Sloan (Eric Dane), who got to say his goodbyes before going into a coma.

Then we have the Neutral deaths, like Craig Thomas (William Daniels), who died during surgery; Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), who died during incompetent surgery (or, technically, when Meredith unplugged him); Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who died suddenly of a blood clot; and Henry Burton (Scott Foley), who died on Christina’s operating table.

And then there are the truly Awful deaths: Dylan Young (Kyle Chandler), who died of a bomb explosion; Reed Adamson (Nora Zehetner) and Charles Percy (Robert Baker), who died in the hospital shooting during season six; Heather Brooks (Tina Majorino), who died by electrocution; Paul Stadler (Matthew Morrison), who died from second-impact brain swelling after hitting his head on the hospital floor; and George O’Malley (T.R. Knight), who died horribly disfigured without anyone knowing it was him before it was too late. And no, we haven’t forgotten Susan Grey (Mare Winningham), who died of hiccups, but that’s because we can’t decide which category to put her in.

Rest assured, however, that Capshaw, who plays Arizona Robbins, and Drew, who plays April Kepner, were at least as well-behaved off-set as Sandra Oh, who departed the show with Dr. Cristina Yang achieving her dream of being a director of cardiothoracic surgery in Zurich. “[She] left in the most amazing way. She gave everybody so much notice. She knew 10 seasons was all she wanted to do and they don’t get much classier than Sandra Oh,” Pompeo told ET, adding that Capshaw and Drew would get similarly nice endings and would not, in fact, be killed off in any kind of disturbing manner. “Yeah, these endings aren’t tragic.”

While this is certainly a beguiling theory, the fate of one Grey’s Anatomy cast member kind of throws the whole thing off. As Deadline reported, Isaiah Washington, who played Dr. Preston Burke, left the show in June 2007 after he was accused of calling T.R. Knight, who’s gay, a homophobic slur. Far from dying, his character merely called off his wedding with Cristina Yang on the day of, and Washington later returned for a cameo during Oh’s exit episode. So make of that what you will.

Related: Meredith and Cristina Will Always Be the Best Couple on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’



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