[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Grey’s Anatomy Season 41 Episode 2, “We Built This City.”]
As the rest of the hospital got back to work, welcoming in the new class of interns — albeit, in a surgical wing that was still in shambles — Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone) went into a state of near-catatonia over the deadly explosion that her patient’s mother caused. Her spiral was something only her sisters could help with, so in came both Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and Maggie Pierce (Kelly McCreary) to whisk her away to Mer’s old house while the now-second-years were away.
It was the first time we’d seen Maggie since Season 20, and the reunion gave the women an opportunity to take a trip down memory lane, comfort one another, and celebrate some news.
Amelia wasn’t easy to assuage, of course. She reasoned that if she had never performed the first surgery on little Dylan, the child wouldn’t be suffering from locked-in syndrome, and her mother wouldn’t have resorted to such deadly measures in the first place, so Monica Beltran (Natalie Morales) wouldn’t have died, and Atticus “Link” Lincoln (Chris Carmack) wouldn’t be struggling so much with recovering from his injuries. However, Maggie remembered her own experience feeling intensely responsible for a loss after what happened to her cousin Sabi (who was played by McCreary’s real-life sister Crystal), and her news that she was expecting after deciding to become a single mother lifted everyone’s spirits, including Amelia’s.
Maggie’s visit, and her decision to embark on this brave new adventure, inspired Amelia to do her own soul-searching, taking a sabbatical from the hospital to be with “her people” for a while. Meanwhile, Maggie and Meredith also had a touching goodbye after visiting the merry-go-round that had been such a hallmark of her life with her “extraordinary” children. When Maggie worried that she might need her mother as she became a mom herself, Meredith told her simply, “Then you call me.”
To break down this emotional and surprising reunion, TV Insider caught up with Kelly McCreary, so read on to find out everything she had to say about coming back for Grey’s Anatomy‘s milestone 450th episode.
I’m glad you’re back, and I was especially excited that it was for a sister moment. Can you just talk about coming back this time, not for a boy, not for a patient, but for your girls?
Kelly McCreary: Yeah, I know, me too. I think that’s one of the things I loved about Maggie’s journey on Grey’s Anatomy was that she really became ingrained in the universe, and she had ties all over the place. So coming back to be with her sisters felt perfectly natural and actually important — not just as a character, but also as an appreciator of the show and what it does… The sister storylines — whether it was Cristina Yang [Sandra Oh] and Meredith and Izzy [Katherine Heigl] in the beginning, to how it’s evolved over these last 22 seasons — those moments are absolutely the heartbeat of the show, where these people can come together and process their traumas and dramas and triumphs. And so I love that, I love that Maggie’s reappearance was sort of one of those heartbeat moments.
I also love that they did a lot of winks in their conversations to things, trips down memory lane. You’re talking about the wall-busting and Amelia getting dressed in the backseat, and there’s also some emotional moments, too, like when she brings up Sabi and her mother. What was it like for you just to revisit all those little storylines that were so iconic from the journey?
It was really cool because [there were] so many storylines, and some of them were incredibly impactful in the moment. And I thought, “Oh my God, I’ll never forget doing that scene.” And then you absolutely do forget it now in a million hours of shooting. So, of course, the Sabi storyline, I would never forget. I did that with my own actual sister, and honestly, I remember it kind of really leaving a mark on Maggie as a character because she did grieve alone. I can’t remember what else was happening in the hospital with Amelia and Meredith, but I just remember Maggie alone in her bedroom, in her depression, and having to come out of it by herself, and it was, for Maggie, a real show of strength, and it was an important evolutionary moment for her.
So, of course, that would come up here. And of course, she would want to show up for Amelia, and you know exactly how that went. So I thought they’re so smart. I mean, [showrunner] Meg Marinis is this Grey’s Anatomy encyclopedia. Do people ever talk about that? [She remembers] every single thing… It also feels really satisfying to be like, “Yeah, we have these shared memories.” Our characters are so richly drawn, and they have had so much life that these points of reference are really real. They are really ingrained in who these people are.
Disney / Anne Marie Fox
We get some news about Maggie in this episode, that she’s decided to be a mother. How do you feel about that journey for her and what’s ahead for her?
Yeah, I have to say, I found it pretty unexpected in the sense that Maggie left behind family ties, a marriage, to go and have this adventure by herself and to fulfill this part of herself. Once she had fulfilled these family questions, and that part of her journey was over, she was ready to start something brand new. So in that sense, this choice goes right along with that sense of a renewed sense of identity, like, “Oh, I didn’t even know I wanted to have children, and I want to have them right now, urgently.” So, it’s kind of cool to think about how she got to Chicago and found another part of herself.
We see in this episode that Amelia, after spending time with Maggie and Meredith, decides she’s going to take a break from the hospital to be with her “people.” Do you think that includes Maggie? And what do you think about her decision?
I mean, I think that Maggie and Amelia together, taking care of each other in this very tender time for both of them, would be so special. But I have no idea what that means for Amelia. She’s got important people in her life all over the place. She comes from a big family. So what will be really interesting is this is an opportunity for Amelia to reinvent, too. So it’ll be cool to see what she excavates and has to sort of polish and discover.
Disney / Anne Marie Fox
This episode ends with a moment with Maggie talking about her mom while she’s at the carousel that’s so significant to Meredith’s mom — well, both of their mom — and her childhood. There were a lot of metaphors in that. Can you just talk about the power of that setting and the dialogue in that moment between them?
Well, first of all, I have to say that I’ve never worked on that set. I’ve never done a scene at the carousel. And it was very emotional for me, personally, to be able to be part of it — again, this show has so many iconic moments and settings, and each time you get to do one, when you do an elevator scene, your first OR scene, it always has a certain kind of momentous weight to it. So it was that for me, as an actor.
[For] the characters in that scene, I think when you are an adult and you’ve lost a parent, you never stop needing mothering, and when women can step into that role for one another, while at the same time balancing the other dynamics in the relationships, it’s incredibly powerful, but it’s what we do. And one thing about Grey’s Anatomy that’s so special is that it has explored in such rich detail over the years how incredibly dynamic women and powerful women in relationship can be, how incredibly dynamic women are, an right along with the idea that Maggie will up and change her mind about her plans for her life and decided to have a child, is the fact that she still doesn’t have quite figured out and still needs support, and still needs love, and she still has her sister to go through that with her. So it was incredibly special.
This episode is the 450th of Grey’s Anatomy, so it’s a big milestone. What does it mean to you, just in general, to have been a part of the show that’s redefining what’s possible for network TV, especially now?
I think I had gotten to the show shortly before the 250th episode. And I was like, “Whoa, this show is going to be off the air pretty soon. 250 episodes? That’s a lot, so surely, this must be nearly the end.” And then we did the 300th celebration, then the 350th, and then I was there for the 400th, too, actually, now that I think about it. All of them seemed impossible milestones to reach. And then I think that, in a way, they are going to be impossible. I think our appetites for television consumption as a culture are just different now, and the people at the top of the creative food chain like storytelling differently by and large, I think. And so in many ways, I kind of feel like Grey’s Anatomy is this legacy that encapsulates all of the things that we’ve ever loved about TV from the very beginning, the evolution of storytelling, and then the opportunity to be with these characters for such a long time. For it to be a romcom, for it to be a comedy, a drama, to be a suspense thriller at times, to touch action, to touch every genre, it is like television history encapsulated. So I think it’s incredible. Congratulations to Shonda [Rhimes] and Betsy [Beers] and everybody who has worked tirelessly over these years to make it happen. It’s an honor to be part of it.
Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC