Grey’s Anatomy Alum Sarah Drew Says Her Exit From Show “Felt Mean and Unjust”

The talented actress who just recently left the show after being fired in 2018 also shares the story of which character she was going to share a one night stand with prior to the start of season seven.

It seems like Sarah Drew is reminiscing on how she felt after being on Grey’s Anatomy for nine seasons.

The actress who portrayed the character of Dr. April Kepner was recently fired from the ABC medical drama after season 14 airing in Year 2018; likewise, Jessica Capshaw who portrayed Dr. Arizona Robbins was also fired. Nonetheless, just a few months after her departure, the Grey’s Anatomy shortform series B-Team — which Drew directed — received an Emmy nod.

“We were fired in a way that was so cruel and unfair that I felt it was like being buried alive and the amount of love that poured in was like you are watching people bury you,” Drew said this on a latest Call It What It Is podcast with Capshaw and Camilla Luddington.

Looking back, she told Vulture: ‘It was like celebrating at your own funeral when I went to the Emmy nom party after leaving the show.’ Although her “confidence had gotten a bit shaken in the wake of being let go” the bitter truth hit her only later, by 2018, when she told The Hollywood Reporter, “It was a profound affirmation and recognition of the fact that I could act.”

‘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.’ They said, ‘You are not only going to work on this as an actor, but now you are going to step out into this world and work as a director and as a producer and the world is your oyster.” In spite of all that, more than anything else, the last few weeks after my final episodes have been a really beautiful rebirth and a really exciting time.

Own departure from Grey’s Anatomy shocked not only the viewers, but also Drew herself. She also said to THR that the firing happened because “the show had too many characters and that they needed to downsize because they couldn’t service all these characters properly.” The writers did not want any of us to be portrayed in the background and not get much of a story told about.

But the Cagney and Lacey actress has, however, reprised her role in the hit medical drama in the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons. Notably, she said that on the Call It What It Is pod cast she noted that coming back to the show has been “freeing.”

“I have no attachment to [the show] at all,” Drew tried rationalising. That is why I had zero anxiety [going back because] I don’t need anything from anyone on that set anymore. They’re not responsible for giving me the abilities to earn a living anymore. They don’t dictate how successful I am or whether I am happy … I’m like, ‘Hey! “It is really cool just to come and hang out here I think,” and, “This is a cool place to come hang out.”

Elsewhere in the podcast, Drew also shared that her character was meant to hook up with Eric Dane’s Mark Sloan in season seven.

“It became like, ‘Okay, before they made my character love Jesus and a virgin, there is a scene where Sloan and Reed [Nora Zehetner] have sex and those scenes are just one-night stand. That was supposed to be me originally. That is at the time it simply clocked April,” she noted. “April was supposed to have some random one-off with Sloan and it was actually in what they initially wrote as a production draft. I had no part to play in it and all of a sudden they wanted me.”