The Love Story That Almost Didn’t Happen: Meredith and Derek’s Journey in Grey’s Anatomy

Grey’s Anatomy has been captivating viewers for over 18 years. Launched in 2005, the series still brings together as many fans thanks to a string of breathtaking intrigues, but also thanks to love stories more moving than each other. Among the couples who marked the program, we find among others Cristina and Burke, Arizona and Callie, Izzie and Alex, Bailey and Ben or Meredith and Derek. Indeed, the love story between the characters played by Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey is one of the most emblematic romances of the series and the fans had a hard time recovering from the death of Doctor Love in season 11. , the latter having to do, at the same time, the mourning of the two lovers.

However, the love story between Meredith Gray and Derek Sheperd may well have never existed. You imagine ? Indeed, the intern of the first season was initially to live a romance with… Preston Burke. It is his interpreter himself, Isaiah Washington, who does a little reminder on this subject in his book How To Save a Life – The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy, published in 2021.

Grey’s Anatomy: when Ellen Pompeo deemed the plot “too close to her private life”

But then, why did Shonda Rhimes deviate from her initial project? It turns out that Ellen Pompeo was not really thrilled by the prospect of a love story between a white woman and a black man, since she judged the situation too close to her private life. “The production wanted Isaiah to be my on-screen boyfriend. Shonda really wanted me to be with a Black man. I didn’t want this storyit was too close to my private life“, confirmed Ellen Pompeo in the columns of the New York Post in 2013. As a reminder, the actress has been married since 2007 to African-American music producer Chris Ivery, with whom she has three children.