As Grey’s Anatomy prepares for its 20th Season, which will premiere on the 2024 TV schedule, Patrick Dempsey is reflecting on his eleven seasons on the show and how it influenced his career. The actor played the beloved Derek Shepherd for over a decade, and he returned once as McDreamy. Now, as he celebrates a successful year that included a pair of projects on the 2023 movie schedule and the title Sexiest Man Alive, the actor looking back at his time on the ABC drama and how it impacted his fans and career.
This year, Patrick Dempsey starred in the Eli Roth horror flick Thanksgiving and Michael Mann’s biopic Ferrari. On top of that, the McDreamy actor was finally named Sexiest Man Alive after 20 years of waiting. There’s no denying that Grey’s Anatomy helped the actor get to where he is today, and he explained how grateful he is for it while on GMA:
['Grey's Anatomy'] has really inspired so many people to go into the medical profession and has given me the platform to be able to do the 'Ferrari' movie and to be able to have [the 'Sexiest Man Alive' title]. I think that's been the biggest gift coming out of that show, is to be able to do something positive and give back.
Back in 2015, when Dempsey left the show, he told EW that this role was “life-changing.” Even though he’d been consistently working for 20 years before Grey’s, there’s no question that this role impacted his career in a profound way. McDreamy was, and still is, a phenomenon, and the love story of Meredith and Derek will be forever iconic.
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While Patrick Dempsey left the show eight years ago, he looks back on it lovingly. At the time of McDreamy’s exit, he said “it had been long enough,” and he was ready to “move on with other things and other interests.” However, his love for the show and fans' love for him remained, and in 2020 he surprised them by returning as Derek in Meredith’s coma dreams, saying that the experience was “really enjoyable.”
Overall, it’s really sweet to hear about Patrick Dempsey’s appreciation for Grey’s Anatomy. While Dr. Shepherd hasn’t been on the show regularly for a really long time, we still feel his impact through characters like his sister Amelia, nephew Lucas and of course, Meredith (up until Ellen Pompeo’s exit as a regular last season).
So, now that we know how highly the actor thinks about his time on Grey’s, one has to wonder: Will Patrick Dempsey return to the medical procedural? While Derek is dead, they’ve found ways to bring him back before, and the actor did say we should “never say never” with a show like this. Even though I doubt we’ll see McDreamy again, it’s nice to know that the door is not totally closed, and the actor still has a lot of love for the show that helped turn him into a star (and heartthrob).
To go back and watch Patrick Dempsey on Grey’s Anatomy, and to see how the show carried on after he left, you can stream Seasons 1 through 19 of the hit procedural with a Netflix subscription. If you want to see Dempsey’s latest project and how he’s grown as an actor, you can catch Ferrari in theaters on Christmas Day.
