Grey's Anatomy boss on premiere shocker: We wanted to "bring joy, and escape, and fan candy"

Deadline

Showrunner Krista Vernoff, Ellen Pompeo and a certain other person discussed filming the "jaw-dropping twist" to end Thursday's two-hour season premiere. "I have to say that it was an epic feat, the keeping of this secret," says Vernoff. "I didn’t send cuts to the studio and network that included that last scene. I didn’t have writers’ assistants in the writers’ room for the last couple of months. There were writers who didn’t know we were doing this on that staff. Most of the actors didn’t know we were doing this. The crew didn’t know we were doing this when they showed up on the day... I was like a crazy person with this secret. And Ellen and I were texting at all hours of the night, like, who knows, I think this person." Vernoff adds: "From a writer’s perspective, it happened because it was my job to find a way — once we determined that we were doing the pandemic — to also bring joy, and escape, and fan candy, and all the things that at Grey’s Anatomy we give people. We give them romance, and we give them humor, and we give them joy, and a lot of that is lacking for the medical community in this pandemic. And so, I was walking on the beach one day, and I was like, what if there’s a Meredith dream motif?" For her part, Pompeo says of the twist: "There’s just so much darkness, and we knew that coming together would be a little ray of light. And so, I think we had the same idea, at the core, to want to help people and bring a smile to people’s faces. So, he loved the idea, and we were just so excited, and we had a ball filming it." ALSO: Pompeo discussed the shocking twist on Jimmy Kimmel Live!