Grey's Anatomy fans were livid when it was revealed Dr. April Kepner would no longer be a character on the show following the Season 14 finale. Sarah Drew, who played the trauma surgeon on the ABC series for nine seasons, was equally heartbroken to say goodbye to the role. With an Emmy nomination for her short form webseries, B-Team, in the bag, Drew said she's since found "beauty in the midst of grief."
"I don't regret or begrudge anybody this season of my life. I'm embracing it. I had a profound and incredible season of my life on Grey's Anatomy," Drew told Deadline in her first interview since leaving the show, released on Friday.
The 37-year-old said she was thankful for the opportunity to work with series creator Shonda Rhimes and producer Betsey Beers as well as an "incredible community of people" with whom she's fostered "lifelong friendships."
Drew opened up on how she learned April was being booted off the show. "I was let go during an episode where I was shadowing Kevin McKidd [who stars as Owen and regularly directs episodes]," she said. "It was in the afternoon, and I went back to my trailer and I did my crying and called my people. A whole bunch of people came into my trailer to give me hugs and cry with me and tell me they were so sad I was leaving."
Despite being fired, Drew said she went on shadowing McKidd until she was cast in a leading role for CBS's reboot of Cagney & Lacey.
Drew said the main reasons for her character's removal from the show were its having "too many characters" and the need to downsize. "They didn't want any of us to be left in the background and not getting much of a story. Because there were so many series regulars, they needed to downsize and to find some characters that they felt like they could tie up their stories well," she said.
"[Showrunner] Krista Vernoff said that she felt like April had been through so much and had come out the other side and that she didn't know what she could put her through again. It was really hard to hear that," Drew continued. "But Krista had a lot of very complimentary things to say about the work that I had done—especially this past season—and that April was going to have her happy ending."
As fans saw in the Season 14 finale, April said goodbye to Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital after deciding to take her expertise to service the homeless. She does, however, not leave her boyfriend Matthew Taylor (Justin Bruening) who asked her to marry him.
Admitting that it was "painful" when she first learned her character was not returning for Season 15, Drew said she's since found peace in the aftermath of her firing. "In retrospect, I think it would have been hard for me to walk away from that job," she said. "I was on it for nine years. It feels right and it feels like a good time to move on to something else with all the great love in my heart that I have for everybody and respect and gratitude for what that experience was. Playing a character for nine years is a long haul."
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