Spoiler alert! Minor spoilers for Grey’s Anatomy’s October 23 episode “Between Two Lungs.” Season 22 can be streamed with a Hulu subscription if you’re not caught up.
Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 has already featured some huge medical cases, including a gnarly injury in its milestone 450th episode. A forklift through the chest is pretty good, but for Anthony Hill, a different episode on the 2025 TV schedule sticks out — “Between Two Lungs,” in which his character Winston Ndugu got to work with Meredith Grey on a risky surgery. Working with Dr. Grey is inarguably a big deal, but it turns out the same is true of acting alongside Ellen Pompeo.
Anthony Hill joined Grey’s Anatomy at the end of Season 16 so, while he’s not the greenest doctor in the house, he's new enough that actors as tenured as Chandra Wilson, James Pickens Jr. and Ellen Pompeo could be intimidating to him. Apparently, the October 23 episode was the first time Winston and Meredith had a case together, and Hill seemed psyched when he talked to US Weekly about it, saying:
To work with Ellen [Pompeo] on the show that she’s the titular character of — and not just be passing in the hallway and saying, ‘Hey,’ — but actually working on a medical case, and one where we have differing opinions on how to approach something, it was fun to play. It was interesting.
The case involved a complicated transplant, in which two parents were each donating part of their lung to their son.
Winston was apprehensive about the surgery due to the lifelong effects it could have on all three of the family members, even if they were successful. Apparently, it was fun to act in that dissenting role, even if his character did have to stand up to the great Meredith Grey. He said:
It’s dynamic, and it was challenging for me. That’s the kind of [scene] that I enjoy, and to get to share the screen with Ellen is this rite of passage that I haven’t gotten to do in a medical setting yet. It’s been really enjoyable.
It wasn’t just Ellen Pompeo that Anthony Hill was excited to share scenes with, but Scott Speedman as well, who plays transplant surgeon and Meredith’s partner Nick Marsh. Hill continued:
That’s fun for me because I love them as actors [and] I love them as characters. And, to get in the mix and sink your teeth into a medical story that has some weight to it, you can’t beat that. That’s the best part about the show.
I'd imagine the experience was made even better by the fact that when complications arose inside the operating room, it was Winston who figured out how to pivot and save the patients’ lives. Hopefully, Anthony Hill’s acting skills were appreciated by Ellen Pompeo and Scott Speedman as much as Winston won the respect of Meredith and Nick.
We’ll have to see what’s ahead for Winston for the rest of Season 22, but fans may be preoccupied with a different heartthrob surgeon in the upcoming “Goodbye Horses,” when Jesse Williams returns as Dr. Jackson Avery. Tune in at 10 p.m. ET Thursdays on ABC and streaming the next day on Hulu.
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