Seattle Grace sings!
On Thursday's Grey's Anatomy, Miranda, Arizona, Callie and the gang are set to show off their vocal chops in a series first: A musical episode.
"[I'm] very surprised and in denial about it til this day, but we did it," Chandra Wilson (Miranda) tells UsMagazine.com of the endeavor, which will include covers of songs by Snow Patrol, Anna Nalick and The Fray. "It will definitely be a departure show, but I think the fans will enjoy."
Front and center for the unique episode? Sara Ramirez, whose pregnant character Callie will go through an out-of-body experience of sorts in the wake of her traumatic car crash.
"[Creator] Shonda Rhimes and the writers toyed with the idea of having Callie sing spontaneously in a scene [for a long time], and I'm kind of relieved that it never happened before, because it just didn't make sense to me for her character to just sing out of nowhere," Ramirez has said.
Instead, the show's cast insists the musical numbers will be presented organically.
VIDEO: Spring TV news and previews
"[Viewers] get the idea of us in scrubs, snapping our fingers down a hallway like West Side Story, but that's not what it's like at all," Jessica Capshaw (Arizona) tells Us. "We had the read-through and people were blown away — there were tears and goose bumps. By the end of it, all of us were like 'I hope it's fantastic, I think it's fantastic!'"
And while some cast members, like Ramirez — who earned a Tony for her stint in Broadway's Spamalot — were comfortable bursting into song, others were just plain terrified.
"There was a large portion of the cast who said 'How is this going to work?'," admits Sarah Drew (April). "Because we're so not Glee. I love Glee but it's just not Grey's Anatomy. It took some time to wrap our brains around how this episode would go, but once [the script] was in our hands, everyone was on board."
Albeit hesitantly, in the case of Kim Raver, who plays Teddy. "I'm not a singer," Raver tells Us. "I [was] rehearsing in my car! If you [saw] me driving, I'm not talking on the phone, I'm actually practicing!"
Grey's Anatomy: The Music Event airs Thursday at 9 p.m. (EST) on ABC.
By Allison Corneau for UsMagazine.com. For more Channel Surfing, click here.
