The doctor is out! Patrick Dempsey, who left Grey’s Anatomy earlier this year after 11 seasons, is weighing in on series creator Shonda Rhimes‘ comments regarding writing characters out of her shows for personal reasons.
During a November appearance on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show, host Larry Wilmore asked Rhimes, 45, if she has ever killed off a character because she wasn’t getting along with the actor. “Yes, and I’m not naming names,” Rhimes replied.
Dempsey, 49, who played Dr. Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd on Grey’s until the character was killed in a car crash in an April episode, was asked in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly whether he thinks the prolific TV producer was talking about him.
“I think she loves being provocative, and that’s fine for who she is,” he said of Rhimes, who also created Scandal and Private Practice and is an executive producer on How to Get Away With Murder. “That gets people talking about all the stuff that she’s doing. She’s an amazing woman who is incredibly productive. She’s promoting a book. She’s promoting three shows. And she’s emerging as the star of all of these things.”
“I think she knows how to deal with the media and what she needs to say to get the response that she’s looking for,” the Bridget Jones’s Baby actor continued. “She’s very savvy.”
Rhimes has killed numerous characters over the years, with McDreamy and Harrison Wright — played by Columbus Short on Scandal — being among the recent key examples. Short’s departure was announced a month after he was charged with misdemeanor spousal battery against his wife, who later filed for divorce.
Regarding leaving his long-running TV gig, Dempsey — who is also an avid auto racer — told EW that he was “was ready to move on, and then I was focused on racing.”
“[I’m] very happy to have moved on with a different chapter in my life,” he said, adding that working on the forthcoming Renee Zellweger romantic comedy “completely reinvigorated me.”
Tell Us: Do you miss McDreamy on Grey’s Anatomy?
Grey’s Anatomy airs on ABC Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET. Bridget Jones’s Baby is set to hit theaters on September 16, 2016.
