Gray’s Anatomy is celebrating 20 years on tv this 12 months, as its twenty second season is primed to hit the 2025 TV calendar subsequent month. The anniversary celebration deliberate for the Emmy Awards could have fallen by, however creator Shonda Rhimes remains to be trying again on the previous couple of a long time at what the present has completed. Gray’s Anatomy has at all times been noteworthy for its numerous forged, and Rhimes recollects how she pushed for that to occur.
Within the documentary Seen & Heard: The Historical past of Black Tv (obtainable to stream with an HBO Max subscription), Shonda Rhimes stated after they had been auditioning actors again within the early 2000s, she hadn’t written any of the characters’ races into the script, and she or he was perplexed when solely white actors got here in to learn for roles. She stated:
I saved saying, ‘The place are the entire actors?’ They might hold sending us these actors who all appeared the identical, who had been white. I keep in mind standing up within the room and turning round and looking out on the president of the community on the time and saying, ‘I’m not going to have an all-white present.’
The executives assured her that was by no means the plan, and calls had been made, Shonda Rhimes stated. The expertise businesses got here by, too, as she continued:
This flood of actors began to come back in, and it was actually fantastic. We obtained to see all these actors who had by no means been thought-about for roles apart from very small components earlier than.
Shonda Rhimes has stated it makes her “embarrassed for tv” that a part of her legacy and that of Gray’s Anatomy can be that they made it potential for extra individuals of shade to have on-camera jobs on tv, as a result of it shouldn’t have taken so lengthy.
Earlier than Gray’s Anatomy premiered in 2005, you didn’t see three Black characters — Chandra Wilson’s Miranda Bailey, James Pickens Jr.’s Richard Webber and Isaiah Washington’s Preston Burke — in fundamental roles, holding prestigious jobs within the hospital. It was one thing Shonda Rhimes stated she may very well be happy with. In her phrases:
I simply knew that I used to be not going to make a present that I’d’ve been embarrassed to placed on TV. I wasn’t going to make a present that I must flip to my mother and father and go, ‘Yeah, it has an all white forged, however that’s how TV’s made.’ Like, how was I going to say that to my dad?
The range on the present has continued throughout its 20 years on ABC, that includes docs and sufferers of many races, in addition to LGBTQ+ and nonbinary characters. Gray’s Anatomy has tackled points like AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) hate, racial injustice, gender discrimination and abuse.
Gray’s Anatomy wouldn’t be the identical if Shonda Rhimes hadn’t insisted on hiring a various forged 20 years in the past, and I believe tv as a complete is best for it.
All 21 seasons of Gray’s Anatomy will be streamed with a Netflix subscription or Hulu subscription, and Season 22 is about to premiere at 10 p.m. ET Thursday, October 9, on ABC and streaming the subsequent day on Hulu.