[Warning: The next comprises spoilers from Thursday’s winter finale of Gray’s Anatomy. Learn at your personal danger!]
Grey’s Anatomy could have virtually damaged Maggie Pearce (Kelly McCreary). The world’s battle with COVID-19 rages on, the virus will proceed to be the principle star of the present’s seventeenth season, and it is placing the entire medical doctors of Gray Sloan Memorial Hospital beneath back-breaking strain, with Maggie seemingly on the precipice of a meltdown within the present’s winter finale.
The episode started with Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) — Maggie’s sister — waking as much as what has felt like weeks of being unconscious, solely to succumb once more to her signs on the finish of the episode. Mer’s seemingly miraculous restoration appeared to assist increase Maggie’s spirits however the finale ended with Meredith having to be placed on a ventilator and the medical doctors torn on whether or not this was a obligatory step to save lots of her life, or an indication that it would quickly be time to say goodbye to Meredith Gray.
If that wasn’t tense sufficient, Station 19‘s kidnapping storyline carried over into the episode as nicely, with the teenage women and their alleged kidnapper getting their post-fire care at Gray Sloan Memorial. The case could have the largest penalties for DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti), who’s the closest to discovering the connection between the kidnapper and the intercourse trafficker he confronted earlier than his breakdown in Season 16, however the tragedy of what occurred to the ladies, and what might have occurred if the Station 19 firefighters hadn’t stepped in, had a profound impact on a number of medical doctors within the hospital.
Maggie was one such physician because the case delivered to the floor how Black ladies and women within the nation are far much less shielded from horrific techniques like intercourse trafficking and kidnapping than different folks. Maggie’s frustration over the injustice, mixed with the outrageous variety of Black and Brown folks she has needed to watch die from COVID-19, regardless of Seattle solely having an eight % Black inhabitants, led to a breakthrough second between Maggie and her “sister” Amelia (Caterina Scorsone). TV Information spoke with McCreary concerning the finale, her episode-defining speech, and the way Gray’s Anatomy is continuous its finest season but whereas tackling probably the most troublesome material.
Kelly McCreary, Gray’s Anatomy
Let’s begin with the tip of the episode. Meredith is unconscious once more and hooked as much as a ventilator. How is that going to have an effect on Maggie when the present returns?
Kelly McCreary: On the finish of the episode, Maggie had left the hospital — after a tough day, by the way in which, after a very tough day — and it is an enormous blow to seek out out that after the hope of Meredith making some enhancements she has gone again in the wrong way, and what I believe is so scary but in addition sort of profound about that second is that it feels so symbolic. Not simply of plenty of sufferers expertise with COVID, proper? We all know that this factor goes up and down and it is unpredictable and scary in that manner. However it’s additionally actually seems like a metaphor for the state of the world that we’re in proper now. Issues appear to be on observe, after which there is a surge. Each time issues appear to be sort of night out there’s some disruption and chaos and I really feel like that’s so resonant with so many individuals’s lives proper now. Maggie isn’t any totally different. We’re all simply looking for our footing presently, and but issues appear so unstable. That is precisely what occurred.
What’s it like telling this story whereas the world continues to be in the course of experiencing the pandemic?
McCreary: This season is devoted to frontline employees and it’s a hospital present. We play medical doctors so it solely follows that our POV follows our medical doctors. The fact is that our medical doctors on this nation are very, very within the thick of issues, extra so now than they’ve been earlier than. It is humorous, as a result of a part of the expertise of truly taking part in the scene as an actor is, you do not know what is going on to occur. You may’t play the tip of the scene. It’s important to keep in each single second and deal with every factor that occurs prefer it’s model new, even when it is your fifteenth take. That is as a result of that is how life is. You do not know how issues are gonna prove. We won’t predict what path issues are going to go in. This form of storyline, whereas taking part in out in actual life … we do not know which path to go in additional than we all know as a rustic, how lengthy we will be on this factor. It simply feels very very similar to an train in sort of staying within the current second.
You’ve got an extremely highly effective monologue that Maggie delivers to Amelia about how otherwise the pandemic and the kidnapping of those younger women impacts her. What was it prefer to movie that?
McCreary: That was a very unimaginable [scene]. Felicia Delight wrote that monologue. It’s the fruits, the burden of a lot. Each one of many medical doctors on our present is carrying one thing heavy. It’s totally particular to their identities and their very own previous trauma. That speech is such a gap into Maggie’s expertise of COVID and every part, and the entire upheaval on the planet proper now — that is the lens by way of which she sees it. As a Black girl she will be able to’t assist however see the impression on individuals who appear like her, and have an expertise that’s just like hers .I am so grateful [to Felicia] for writing that speech and creating that opening into Maggie’s psyche, which I can relate to personally and I do know lots of people have the identical considerations. How and why [have Black women] develop into invisible whereas on the similar time being exalted and celebrated for saving democracy, for instance. On the similar time, we’re so outdoors of the margin of a lot.
I used to be nervous. I simply wished to do that justice. There’s so some ways into the ache of this, of attempting to attach along with her sister on this second and have an impactful communication with Amelia, and but you bought to get again to work. It is only a second in her day. There was such care taken by our director, Pete Chatmon, who occurs to be my husband. He understood that was a speech that wanted time and area to be form of found out and landed on in order that we might get all of these moments proper. I used to be actually grateful to have him on the helm of that scene.
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Does this speech shift Maggie and Amelia’s relationship in any manner provided that Maggie is stating that even when they’re sisters, they do not expertise the world the identical manner?
McCreary: What I believe is basically nice, really, is that it’s not the primary time they’ve had a communication like this that distinguished Amelia’s expertise of the world from Maggie’s. One other time that we did, I believe it was in Season 12. I am not going to recollect, but it surely was on the finish of an episode when Maggie sort of [called] Amelia on the idea of unconscious or implicit bias and opened her eyes to that actuality. What I really like is that it’s an ongoing dialog between Maggie and Amelia as a result of if it isn’t your expertise, you are not gonna at all times get it the primary time. If you have not continued to research it, you are not going to get it. It’s important to maintain being engaged with these questions. Why do totally different folks expertise the world in numerous [ways]? I really like that our present [tackles this] in each single episode. This dialog between Maggie and Amelia simply makes it extra specific.
What are you hoping folks take in from this episode after they watch it?
McCreary: I’m hoping that individuals are in a position to sit again, and in the event that they did not know already, I hope they’re in a position to say, “Okay. Wow, I actually perceive why the expertise of Black ladies and women on this nation is totally different. And I wish to know why that’s, and the way we are able to make it doable to create circumstances and environments the place Black ladies and women thrive to the identical diploma that everybody else on this nation will get to — that they expertise pleasure and alternative, and enjoyable, and make errors, and see the fullest expression of themselves as a lot as anyone else on this nation. I hope that individuals are in a position to sort of get with the fact of that distinction and know that we really do have the ability to alter it.
What are you most excited for followers to see when Gray’s Anatomy returns in 2021?
McCreary: I’ve stated this a few instances, however I believe that is my favourite season of the present. I believe that the richness with which we’re exploring each single one of many characters on the present proper now’s so enjoyable to observe. That continues, and it continues to be extremely shifting.
Gray’s Anatomy returns subsequent yr on ABC.