What 20 ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Stars Have Said About Their Shocking Exits, From Sarah Drew to Eric Dane
Grey’s Anatomy has been on the air so long that more than three dozen actors have scrubbed in as series regulars over the years. And most of those actors have scrubbed out again, too — of the original cast members, only Ellen Pompeo, Chandra Wilson, and James Pickens Jr. are still around, and Pompeo is only on the show part-time these days.
Furthermore, several of the ABC hospital drama’s alums didn’t leave of their own accord, and some have talked publicly about that behind-the-scenes upheaval. Sarah Drew said recently her exit “felt really mean and unjust” (although she later clarified that while it was “hard” at the time, it’s been a “great gift” in retrospect thanks to her new opportunities). Meanwhile, Eric Dane quipped that he was “probably fired” from the show. Here’s what those actors and a dozen and a half other Grey’s alums have said about leaving the hit show.
Isaiah Washington (Dr. Preston Burke)
Washington was let go from Grey’s Anatomy at the end of Season 3 after allegedly referring to T.R. Knight by a homophobic slur during an on-set altercation with Patrick Dempsey… and then uttering the same word at the Golden Globes. “I did everything that the producers and the network asked me to do. I came back under great stress, and thought I was doing the job I was hired to do,” Washington said in the book How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy. “I thought that was going to speak for my future at Grey’s, but apparently that wasn’t the same vision that the network and studio had for me.”
Washington did return in Season 10 for a guest stint to help close out co-star Sandra Oh’s storyline.
Kate Walsh (Dr. Addison Montgomery)
Walsh left Grey’s that same year to star in the spinoff Private Practice, telling TV Guide at the time that she was “shocked and excited and mostly just totally blown away” to get her own show. “Then I was nervous, like, ‘Wait, really? Why me?’” she said. “But mostly I was just thrilled because it totally felt like the right thing. I was so flattered and honored that they would think of my character to take off for greener pastures. … It did feel like the right time to go. … It felt like leaving home for college.”
Even though Walsh was the lead of her spinoff, she also returned to the halls of Grey Sloan several times, including in Seasons 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 18, and 19.
Brooke Smith (Dr. Erica Hahn)
Smith was abruptly cut from Grey’s in Season 4 amid rumors that ABC execs were uncomfortable with the sexual relationship between Erica and Callie (Sara Ramirez). “I was really, really shocked,” Smith told Entertainment Weekly at the time. “I was floored when they told me [I was being let go]. It was the last thing I expected. … I don’t know for sure, but it definitely seemed like [executive producer Shonda Rhimes’] hands were tied. That was just my gut.”
T.R. Knight (Dr. George O’Malley)
Knight cited a “breakdown of communication” between himself and Rhimes when he left Grey’s at the end of Season 5, a season in which his screen time dwindled. “My five-year experience proved to me that I could not trust any answer that was given [about George]. And with respect, I’m going to leave it at that,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “There are a lot of people who would like to be in my position. But in the end, I need to be fulfilled in my work.”
Knight’s was one of several killed-off characters to make a cameo in Meredith’s Covid-19 fever dream in Season 17.
Katherine Heigl (Dr. Izzie Stevens)
Heigl departed Grey’s midway through Season 6 after publicly criticizing her storylines and her workload on the series. “I look back at it, and sometimes I go, ‘God, I wish I had just calmed down a moment, taken a breath, thought it through, had some conversations about, what about this possibility, what about this possibility? How about if I do, you know, just this many episodes a season?’” she told SiriusXM’s Bevy Smith in 2022. “If I could have found a way to work within it that would have also worked for me. But I only saw it as this one thing. I was up here at a level of intensity that was not healthy for me. And I just kind of fled in a panic.”
Chyler Leigh (Dr. Lexie Grey)
Leigh exited the show at the end of Season 8, and she opened up about her mindset at the time in a 2014 interview with Puremedias.com. “I had gotten to the point where I was missing out on the lives of my children,” she said, per an English translation of the French interview transcript. “It wasn’t worth it. It’s not a criticism of the show or the people who work on it. I am very grateful to have had this experience, and I will always be. But it was too much.”
Leigh’s Lexie Grey also briefly reprised her role for the Covid-19 storyline in Season 17.
Eric Dane (Dr. Mark Sloan)
Dane, meanwhile, was written out of the show a few episodes later, and in a 2024 interview on the podcast Armchair Expert, he said he had gotten expensive for the network and that he struggled with substance problems while on the show. “I wasn’t the same guy they had hired,” he reflected. “So I had understood when I was let go. And Shonda [Rhimes] was really great. She protected us fiercely. She protected us publicly. She protected us privately. … But I was probably fired.”
The feelings must not have been too hard, though, because Dane’s Mark Sloan was another visitor to Meredith’s beachside getaway in Season 17.
If you or someone you know has addiction issues, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration‘s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
Sandra Oh (Dr. Cristina Yang)
“I think it was just all creative,” Oh told Deadline in 2022, looking back on choosing to leave Grey’s at the end of Season 10. “I felt I did absolutely all I could, creatively, in creating this character, and in the way that I think that it was an amazing opportunity as an actor and a challenge as an artist, is how do you stay in the game still creating when there are similar situations that repeat over and over again? How do you still keep it creative? … I did feel, when we’re coming to what would be a 10-year stop, I was like, ‘I think I’m done.’”
Patrick Dempsey (Dr. Derek Shepherd)
Derek died a shocking death in Season 11 amid reports of behind-the-scenes tension between Dempsey and Rhimes. The tell-all How to Save a Life quotes an executive producer who says there were “HR issues” with the actor as he was “terrorizing the set” and giving cast members “all sorts of PTSD,” per The Hollywood Reporter. In the same book, Dempsey sounds off on his departure and his character’s death. “It was just a natural progression,” he said of leaving the show. “And the way everything was unfolding in a very organic way, it was like, ‘Okay! This is obviously the right time.’ Things happened very quickly. We were like, ‘Oh, this is where it’s going to go.’”
Dr. Shepherd did make a brief comeback in Season 17 as one of the most-anticipated guest stars of the Covid dream sequences, reuniting with Meredith for four episodes of the season.
Sara Ramirez (Dr. Callie Torres)
Ramirez left the Grey’s picture at the end of Season 12 of their own accord, with Rhimes saying at the time that Ramirez told her they needed a break, per Entertainment Weekly. Years later, in 2022, Ramirez explained to Variety that they left the show because they felt done with Callie. “I had reached a physical, emotional, mental capacity for playing the character — and had sort of lost myself with it,” they said.
Jerrika Hinton (Dr. Stephanie Edwards)
Hinton left Grey’s in Season 13’s fiery finale, and How to Save a Life reports the actor had a contentious relationship with Pompeo stemming from her taking unsanctioned photos of Pompeo on set. But Hinton told Entertainment Weekly in 2017 that it was her own decision to leave and that she had a “very, very open and straightforward” conversation with Rhimes about her exit. “You ever have one of those conversations — with a superior in particular, not just a peer — that feels like a natural, genuine meeting of the minds? That’s what that conversation was like,” she added. “It was extremely and deeply gratifying.”
Martin Henderson (Dr. Nathan Riggs)
Henderson said farewell to Grey’s in Season 14, with Pompeo saying in a 2018 interview with The Hollywood Reporter that producers “didn’t love the storyline [between Meredith and Nathan], so that ended.” At the time of his exit, Henderson told Deadline he “only had a short-term contract” with Grey’s. “This is my final year, so I was expecting Nathan’s storyline to be wrapped up,” he said. “It’s been a couple of fun years on the show.”
Sarah Drew (Dr. April Kepner)
Both Drew and Jessica Capshaw, below, were given their walking papers at the end of Season 14, and fans were so devastated and supportive of the two actors that Drew famously likened the experience to attending her own funeral. “What I was trying to describe was, we were unceremoniously let go in a way that felt really mean and unjust, and because of that, the outpouring of love was so enormous that it was like you were sitting there watching people say all the things that they love about you,” she said on a 2024 episode of Call It What It Is.
Drew briefly returned to her role for guest stints in Seasons 17 and 18.
Jessica Capshaw (Dr. Arizona Robbins)
Capshaw was let go at the same time as Drew, and she said in a 2024 episode of the podcast Scrubbing In with Becca Tilley & Tanya Rad that she’s not ready to give her side of the story. “It was a multi-layered situation,” she said. “I’ve been asked [about the exit] before, and I’ve never said what I feel, which is that there is a story and that I’m just not ready to talk about it yet. And I will, but I’m just not there yet. So when other people have asked me before, I think I’ve just sort of bait-and-switched.”
Capshaw later returned for a guest appearance in Season 20.
Justin Chambers (Dr. Alex Karev)
Fans still don’t know why Chambers left the show in the middle of Season 16 — then-showrunner Krista Vernoff told Variety his exit was “just not [her] story to tell” — but Chambers did say in a statement to the press at the time that he had “hoped to diversify [his] acting roles and career choices” for a while before his exit.
Giacomo Gianniotti (Dr. Andrew DeLuca)
Gianniotti lost his Grey’s gig in Season 17 when DeLuca was fatally stabbed while trying to confront a human trafficker, and the actor told Entertainment Weekly at the time that Vernoff and fellow EP Debbie Allen gave him a heads-up about his character’s demise. “I thought it was beautifully written,” he said. “We touched on this human-trafficking story line, which is another huge global pandemic, and we shed light on that very important issue. I just thought they checked all the boxes. Seeing everybody’s reaction to the episode last night, I think we did a great job. So, yes, it’s sad to leave, but it’s nice to go telling a beautiful story that hopefully helps a lot of people.”
Jesse Williams (Dr. Jackson Avery)
Later that season, Williams left the show as Jackson headed off to tackle racial inequality in medicine with a Catherine Fox Foundation job in Boston. “It came up this season. It was a combination of trying to figure out with Krista and the team what makes sense and what’s next for Jackson,” Williams told The Hollywood Reporter at the time, reflecting on his choice to leave. “This was an organic, collective decision … We wrote something together and this is what it was.”
He briefly returned to his role in Seasons 18, 19, and 21.
Greg Germann (Dr. Tom Koracick)
“A TV show, if you’re lucky, has a season and sometimes two or three,” Germann told Shondaland.com, when he left alongside Williams in Season 17. “This show is going into its 18th season. For any profession, especially with the gig economy now, that just doesn’t ever happen. So, when Krista called me months ago, it’s not like I was really surprised. Disappointed, certainly, because I love this job.”
Germann enjoyed guest stints in Seasons 18 and 19, however.
Richard Flood (Dr. Cormac Hayes)
Flood told Deadline at the time of his Season 18 exit that he was fine with the producers’ decision to write Hayes off Grey’s. “Having three years on the show felt right for me, and I think that the arc of the character with all the developments in the story was probably coming to its natural end, which was great,” he said. “I was very happy that everybody felt the same, and they just got to it.”
Kelly McCreary (Dr. Maggie Pierce)
McCreary said her goodbyes to Grey’s in Season 19 after determining that Maggie needed new horizons personally and professionally. “It was the question of whether it was time for her to move on, having gotten what she needed from her personal exploration, having gotten what she needed from growth,” she explained to Shondaland.com. “I thought, ‘I wonder if this is the moment for her to ask a new question.’ So, I went to the team with it, and we agreed it would be a good time for Maggie to go.”
She did stop by once again, though, in Season 20.
Watchlist Easy access to only the shows you care about — all in one simple place
Alerts Only important notifications — when a show is returning, when it becomes available to stream, and more.
Special Offers Exclusive products we release related to your favorite shows and streaming services