While Sarah Drew’s Grey’s Anatomy exit came as a surprise to both her and her fans, she now views it as a blessing in disguise.
“I loved it there. It was a beautiful time and experience, so I wouldn’t have gone,” Drew, 43, shared on the Monday, November 27, episode of Jana Kramer’s “Whine Down” podcast. “But if I hadn’t gone, I wouldn’t be writing, I wouldn’t be producing, I wouldn’t be activating my brain and my heart on all these other layers and levels that has, like, fed my soul and brought me so much joy.”
Producers decided in March 2018 that Drew, who played Dr. April Kepner, and costar Jessica Capshaw, who played Dr. Arizona Robbins, would be written off the ABC medical drama following its season 14 conclusion. “Nobody understood it,” Drew added. “It was so confusing, which is why I say that it was so painful but piercingly joyful because I had another couple [of] weeks still on the show after knowing that I was going, and the outpouring of the love from the fans.”
Fans showed their appreciation by hiring a plane carrying a banner that read, “We love you Sarah Drew and Jessica Capshaw” to fly over the set. Drew noted that she was additionally touched by the goodbye gifts she received from other cast and crew members.
“They put together these boxes for us on our last day. Everybody had written a letter to us, and I was having crew members come up to me to be like, ‘There was this one moment, five years ago, when we had this conversation,’” Drew recalled. “‘It meant so much to me and I want to say thank you before you go.’ And if I had stayed on the show forever and I’d left when everybody else did, I would not have experienced the visceral love bomb that was the experience.”
At the time, Drew also received a phone call from show creator Shonda Rhimes and executive producer Betsy Beers, neither of whom were responsible for her character being written off. “I was so overcome with how loved I was on that set that all I could do was weep,” Drew stated. “I was literally just weeping on the phone with joy, like, thanking them for the opportunity they’d given me to be a part of this family and be a part of this legacy. And that’s truly the only thing I was feeling. I was overcome [with emotion].”
Drew’s experience of feeling “so intensely loved” on the show is one she “wouldn’t trade” for the world. “That reality of holding those two things, pain and joy, that’s just what life is,” Drew said. “We’re just in that all of the time, that is the journey. And the drive and the engine that I am just on all the time is, ‘OK, this is painful. I’m feeling it, I’m looking at it, I’m experiencing it. Where do I find the glory in it?’ Like, I’m a huntress for the glory.”
Drew later reprised her role as April for a season 17 and season 18 episode in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Both saw April reunite with her onscreen love, Dr. Jackson Avery, played by Jesse Williams. The duo have expressed their desire to star in a spinoff, with Drew exclusively telling Us Weekly in September 2022 that she thinks the series could act as a prequel.
“I’d like to kind of go back in time to see them get back together,” she noted. “You know, we got that little tiny piece where the audience was informed that they had come back together, but I’d like to see that happen. I’d like to see the push and pull and the will they won’t they and all that stuff.”
