Patrick Dempsey is speaking out about leaving Grey’s Anatomy after a decade on the ABC show as Derek Shepherd as well as his upcoming role opposite Renee Zellweger and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones’s Baby.
Dempsey said the switch from television to film has “reinvigorated” him, but he wasn’t “surprised at all” about the fans’ reaction to him getting killed off Grey’s.
“I knew it would be heavy like that,” he told EW. “I didn’t realize until we did our interview that it was really over.”
He said he did read some of the reacts online but, “I was ready to move on and then I was focused on racing. When everything started happening, I was out of the country anyway and I was racing, which was a good distraction.”
Dempsey added of his on-screen marriage to Ellen Pompeo’s Meredith, “People were really invested in that relationship.”
He was then asked about Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes recently admitting she has killed off characters when she didn’t like the person they were in real life, but he wouldn’t say if that was the case for him.
“I think she knows how to deal with the media and what she needs to say to get the response that she’s looking for,” he said. “She’s very savvy.”