Advertisement
T.R. Knight is finally opening up about what it was really like to shoot one of the most painfully awkward scenes in Grey’s Anatomy history. You know the one — that uncomfortable, hard-to-watch sex scene between his character George O’Malley and Ellen Pompeo’s Meredith Grey in Season 2.
In a recent chat with People magazine, Knight admitted the whole experience was kind of a nightmare — not just for viewers, but for him and Pompeo too. “We were both just really scared,” he said, adding that it felt totally wrong from the start. “It was like, what are our characters even doing? Why is this happening? It just didn’t feel right.”
To give you some context: the scene comes after Meredith has broken things off with Derek and is feeling pretty emotionally wrecked after a rough talk with her dad. George chooses that moment to act on his feelings for her… and it leads to a night that neither of them — nor the fans — would forget. Not in a good way. The whole thing ends in a blur of tears, regret, and secondhand embarrassment.
Knight didn’t sugarcoat it. “You can’t really find a more humiliating experience for both characters,” he said. And get this — they had to shoot the scene twice. Why? Because apparently the first version had “too much thrusting.” Yep, Knight confirmed that detail, which Ellen Pompeo had also awkwardly brought up on a podcast.
While Ellen has said she cried during filming, Knight joked that he doesn’t remember crying himself — but admitted she probably remembers better than he does. What he does remember is that having to redo the scene made it all the more mortifying. “It was already humiliating once,” he said, “and then we had to relive it.”
Knight also got a little philosophical about it. He explained that as actors, they really care about their characters, and watching them make bad choices can feel a lot like watching someone drive full-speed into disaster — on a rainy night, with no brakes. Still, he gave credit where it’s due, saying that the writers, especially Shonda Rhimes, knew what they were doing. “Let’s be real,” he said. “We all screw up sometimes. We all have moments we wish we could erase. And Shonda has a real gift for writing those messy, human experiences.”
He wrapped it up with a dark little joke: “They’re going to have this awful, awful sex that will haunt them forever… well, for the rest of George’s short life, anyway.”