‘Grey’s Anatomy’s Kim Raver Says Teddy ‘Needs to Do a Lot of Work on Herself’

Meredith Jacobs July 30, 2020, 4:30 pm

Kim Raver as Teddy in Grey's Anatomy - Season 17 — ABC/Christopher Willard

The fictional worlds on our TV screens have hit pause for the moment, as productions shut down in March and are only slowly resuming for the 2020-2021 season.

While Grey’s Anatomy is one that has yet to begin filming again, series star Kim Raver (who’s an executive producer on the new Lifetime movie, Sleeping With Danger) knows her character, Dr. Teddy Altman, needs to take a step back when it comes to her love life. After all, Season 16 ended with her ready to marry Dr. Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd), only for him — unbeknownst to her — to find out she’d been having an affair with her ex-boyfriend, Dr. Tom Koracick (Greg Germann) via a very awkward voicemail. (She remains in the dark about why Owen postponed their wedding.)

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“Teddy needs to do a lot of work on herself,” Raver tells TV Insider. “Things imploded with the finale and Owen finding out. It’ll be interesting to see the aftermath of [that], but I think Teddy had a lot of trauma. Now we’re going to explore what that [is].”

“Her go-to is to fix things and do things for people,” she continues, pointing out she did that with ex-husband Henry (Scott Foley) and his lack of insurance, Owen, and Tom when he came face-to-face with his ex-wife’s son who looked like the one they lost. “It all comes from a good place, but it definitely comes from her needing to do the work because her behavior is definitely reflective of some issues that she has to address.”

Kim Raver Grey's Anatomy Teddy Altman Season 17

(ABC/Raymond Liu)

So while her relationships with Owen, Tom, and ex-girlfriend Allison (Sherri Saum) “are real, true love affairs for her, there’s also a lot of internal work that she has to do,” Raver explains. “[It] will be interesting if we head into that direction [in Season 17]. Her behavior with all three of them — I think she deeply loves all three of them — also comes from her loss and her trauma.”

Raver was one of the Grey’s stars who participated in a chat with the real doctors of the Netflix docuseries Lenox Hill. “It was huge,” she says of the “informative” discussion, adding that she’s grateful for what they do. “Not only watching Lenox Hill, but also just speaking with these doctors because we’re all in our homes, not really knowing what’s going on in the hospital, so to actually be in dialogue with them and understand these hardworking people who are taking time away from their families and really trying to help this country rebound from this pandemic is inspiring. They’re just all working so hard.”