With two decades of wild, emotionally-charged television to pull from, Grey’s Anatomy has given fans plenty of unbelievable moments.
After 20 years, Katherine Heigl recently admitted she can’t watch the ABC medical procedural with her kids, crediting her ghostly sex scene with co-star Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the Season 5 episode ‘In the Midnight Hour’ (2005) as one that makes her “so embarrassed.”
“We have not watched Grey’s. Partly because I was like, ‘How do I explain that?'” she told Entertainment Weekly of the scene. “But I’m like, “‘ou can watch it, but I don’t want to sit next to you. I will be so embarrassed.’ I don’t know how to explain this. And she will make me embarrassed. She will make fun of me. No, it’s better not to give her that ammunition. Do you know what I’m saying?”
In Season 2 of the Shonda Rhimes series, Heigl’s Izzie Stevens falls in love with Denny Duquette (Morgan) while treating him for heart failure. Although Denny tragically dies in the sophomore season, he makes multiple returns from beyond the grave to visit Izzie.
Morgan said he doesn’t “remember much of” his character’s posthumous return in Season 5, because “I don’t know that anybody thought that was working when we were doing it.”
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Katherine Heigl in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ (Scott Garfield/ABC/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Heigl saw the arc as wish fulfillment “for Izzie and Denny to finally basically get to be together and have an actual relationship,” but filming “it was awkward — not the scenes, but the concept.”
“She could never acknowledge me,” recalled Morgan. “And I remember I was yelling at her while everybody else was giving her doctor information. And it was throwing everybody off.”
Heigl added, “Yeah. It was confusing for everyone. There’s one particular scene that I will not watch with my children ever. I don’t care how old they are. I don’t care if they’re 60, I’m not watching this with them. And it was a scene where you’re in the room, but I’m trying to be like, ‘You are not here, you’re not here.’ And Alex [Justin Chambers] and Izzie start messing around and he goes down on her. And you’re just standing there. And I was just sort of at the time like, ‘This is what the money’s for, right?'”
Thursday marked the 20th anniversary of Grey’s Anatomy, which is currently in its 21st season on ABC.
