Sarah Drew is looking back at how she felt leaving Grey’s Anatomy after starring on the show for nine seasons.
The actress, who played Dr. April Kepner, was let go from the ABC medical drama after season 14 in 2018, alongside Jessica Capshaw, who played Dr. Arizona Robbins. However, shortly after her exit, Grey’s Anatomy‘s shortform series B-Team — which Drew directed — scored an Emmy nomination.
“We were unceremoniously let go in a way that felt mean and unjust, and, because of that, the outpouring of love was so enormous it was like you were sitting there watching people [eulogize you],” Drew said on a recent episode of the Call It What It Is podcast, co-hosted by Capshaw and Camilla Luddington.
In a previous interview with Vulture, she likened her experience celebrating the Emmy nom after exiting the show to “attending [my] own funeral.” And while her “confidence had gotten a bit shaken in the wake of being let go,” Drew told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 that she finally realized the nomination was a “profound affirmation” of her talents.
“The nomination after the fact made me go, ‘I don’t need to be worried about anything or have my confidence shaken,’” the actress said at the time. “I’m not only pursuing my career as an actor but I’m now also walking into this world as a director and as a producer and the world is so wide open. More than anything else, the last few weeks after my final episodes have been a really beautiful rebirth and a really exciting time.”
Drew’s exit from Grey’s Anatomy came as a surprise for not only the actress but fans of the show as well. She also previously told THR that the reason for her firing was because “the show had too many characters and that they needed to downsize because they couldn’t service all of the characters effectively. They didn’t want any of us to be left in the background and not getting much of a story.”
However, the Cagney and Lacey actress has since returned to the hit medical drama, making appearances in seasons 17 and 18. She also said on the Call It What It Is podcast that coming back to the show has actually been “freeing.”
“I have no attachment to [the show] at all,” Drew explained. “I had zero anxiety [going back because] I don’t need anything from anyone on that set anymore. They’re not responsible for my livelihood anymore. They’re not responsible for my success or my joy… I’m like, ‘Hey! This is a fun spot to come visit.’”
Elsewhere in the podcast, Drew also revealed that her character was initially supposed to have a one-night stand with Eric Dane’s Mark Sloan in season seven.
“Before they made my character love Jesus and a virgin, there’s a scene where Sloan and Reed [Nora Zehetner] have sex, a random one-night stand. That was supposed to be me originally. It was supposed to be April,” she recalled. “April was supposed to have some random one-off with Sloan and it was in the original production draft [of the script], and then they changed it. I didn’t have anything to do with it, but then they changed their mind.”
