Grey’s Anatomy is celebrating 20 years on television this year, as its 22nd season is primed to hit the 2025 TV calendar next month. The anniversary celebration planned for the Emmy Awards may have fallen through, but creator Shonda Rhimes is still looking back at the past couple of decades at what the show has accomplished. Grey’s Anatomy has always been noteworthy for its diverse cast, and Rhimes recalls how she pushed for that to happen.
In the documentary Seen & Heard: The History of Black Television (available to stream with an HBO Max subscription), Shonda Rhimes said when they were auditioning actors back in the early 2000s, she hadn’t written any of the characters’ races into the script, and she was perplexed when only white actors came in to read for roles. She said:
I kept saying, ‘Where are all of the actors?’ They would keep sending us these actors who all looked the same, who were white. I remember standing up in the room and turning around and looking at the president of the network at the time and saying, ‘I’m not going to have an all-white show.'
The executives assured her that was never the plan, and calls were made, Shonda Rhimes said. The talent agencies came through, too, as she continued:
This flood of actors started to come in, and it was really wonderful. We got to see all these actors who had never been considered for roles other than very small parts before.
Shonda Rhimes has said it makes her “embarrassed for television” that part of her legacy and that of Grey’s Anatomy will be that they made it possible for more people of color to have on-camera jobs on television, because it shouldn’t have taken so long.
Before Grey’s Anatomy premiered in 2005, you didn’t see three Black characters — Chandra Wilson’s Miranda Bailey, James Pickens Jr.’s Richard Webber and Isaiah Washington’s Preston Burke — in main roles, holding prestigious jobs in the hospital. It was something Shonda Rhimes said she could be proud of. In her words:
I just knew that I was not going to make a show that I would’ve been embarrassed to put on TV. I wasn’t going to make a show that I would have to turn to my parents and go, ‘Yeah, it has an all white cast, but that’s how TV’s made.’ Like, how was I going to say that to my dad?
The diversity on the show has continued during its two decades on ABC, featuring doctors and patients of many races, as well as LGBTQ+ and nonbinary characters. Grey’s Anatomy has tackled issues like AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) hate, racial injustice, gender discrimination and abuse.
Grey’s Anatomy wouldn’t be the same if Shonda Rhimes hadn’t insisted on hiring a diverse cast 20 years ago, and I think television as a whole is better for it.
All 21 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy can be streamed with a Netflix subscription or Hulu subscription, and Season 22 is set to premiere at 10 p.m. ET Thursday, October 9, on ABC and streaming the next day on Hulu.
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