A Grey’s Anatomy season 1 cast reunion is coming to television soon, and it features one surprising original cast member from the medical drama.
A Grey’s Anatomy season 1 reunion is coming soon. The long-running medical drama, which was created by Shonda Rhimes, originally premiered on ABC in 2005. Since then, it has continued uninterrupted and so far spanned 19 seasons with a total of 420 episodes, also spawning the spinoffs Private Practice (which lasted for six seasons) and Station 19 (which has also run for six seasons, with a seventh coming in March).
Per Deadline, ahead of the release of Grey’s Anatomy season 20, quite a few members of the original season 1 cast have been set for a reunion. The 75th Emmy Awards, which air on Monday, January 15, will include Ellen Pompeo (Meredith Grey), Justin Chambers (Alex Karev), James Pickens Jr. (Richard Webber), and Chandra Wilson (Miranda Bailey) as presenters. Katherine Heigl (Izzie Stevens) will also be part of the group, despite her controversial exit from the show in the middle of season 6.
Grey’s Anatomy’s Major Cast Exits Explained
Of the five cast members who will be appearing on the Emmys stage, only Wilson and Pickens Jr. will remain part of the main cast of the show in season 20. Pompeo was the most recent of the reuniting stars to leave the show, as her character moved to Boston to pursue a better education for her gifted child midway through Grey’s Anatomy season 19. However, Pompeo has remained on board as the show’s narrator in addition to her role as executive producer.
Heigl, on the other hand, was the first of the five to leave. Her controversial exit during the filming of season 6 came in the wake of a controversy where she had withdrawn herself from consideration for an Emmy nomination for her performance in season 4 on the grounds of not having been given enough material that season. Though she apologized both privately and publicly, a rift between Heigl and Rhimes culminated in her eventual exit, though both have implied that the door may now be open for the possible return of Izzie.
Of the five, Chambers was the next to leave. The star exited the show in season 16 to seek more diversity in his acting roles, at which point Karev had an offscreen reunion with his former wife Izzie in Kansas. While the Grey’s Anatomy cast looks quite different going into season 20, the fact that this reunion is being held in the form that it is shows how much the core cast from the original seasons of the show has shaped its success, even now.
