On the cover of Entertainment Weekly - December 29, 2006
Grey's Anatomy cast in Entertainment Weekly magazine
December 29, 2006 - January 5, 2007 issue
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Grey cast on EW's Entertainers of the Year list The sexy stars of ''Grey's Anatomy'' top our list of 2006's brightest stars
rest of the scans here by mediocrechick (lj)'Grey's' Zone
Read why the characters at Seattle Grace are our Entertainers of the Year by Jennifer Armstrong
Patrick Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo are snuggled in a rumpled bed, and he is looking at her. And by looking at her, we mean looking at her. It is the look that has sent several fictional lives on Grey's Anatomy into dramatic tailspins and has given millions of fans endless fantasy material.
And yet, Pompeo is...giggling. Hysterically.
She apologizes, but she cannot stop. A patient Dempsey morphs from smoldering leading man to bemused costar to, finally, stern taskmaster: ''Quiet, close your eyes, and breathe deeply.'' She does, and for a take or two, it works — Dempsey, as Dr. Derek Shepherd, can peacefully (well, except for the snoring) observe his lover, Dr. Meredith Grey, as she slumbers. Then her laughter breaks loose again, and Pompeo storms off the bedroom set, shouting, ''I can't work with him anymore!''
She is careful, later, to explain that this was just a joke (people are a bit sensitive around the set of the ABC hit these days; more on that later). But emotions do run high — and fast — when it comes to Grey's Anatomy. Its myriad moods change from sexy to funny to dramatic to silly, making for an intoxicating thrill ride that is as unpredictable as it is unmissable.
Since their first half-season in 2005, Seattle Grace's improbably hot surgical staffers have gone from midseason replacements to bona fide stars. And now, having relocated to the toughest time slot on TV, Grey's has become nothing short of a phenomenon, luring an average of 21.4 million fans every week and consistently topping Thursday-night behemoth CSI in the 18-49 demographic. How did they do it? ''The characters are so human,'' ABC Entertainment president Stephen McPherson says. ''Life is messy, it's funny, it's tragic, it's dramatic, and this show captures that.''
For maintaining that deft dramatic balance, for performing a powerful emotional alchemy that transforms the hospital-show genre into something exciting rather than exhausted, and for casting perhaps the most telegenic assemblage of actors in the last decade — for all of these reasons, we have chosen the cast of Grey's Anatomy as our Entertainers of the Year.
That attitude allows the show to take risks: consummating the crush that sweet intern George O'Malley (T.R. Knight, 33) harbored on mixed-up Meredith. That fleeting Meredith-George liaison ''was shocking — even for me, personally,'' says Pompeo, 37. (Knight, along with Walsh and Heigl, declined to participate in this story.) ''I've been kissing Patrick since I met him, but I was like, No, that's my T! I can't make out with him!'' Adds Sandra Oh, 35, who plays tightly wound Dr. Yang, ''When we saw that for the first time at a table read, we were like, Nooooo!'' That's precisely the reaction creator/exec producer Shonda Rhimes, 36, was hoping for. ''When people say they hate what's happening, and then go on to describe in detail everything they hate, I know they're really paying attention and have strong feelings about the characters,'' she says. ''That's a good sign.''
True enough: Few other shows can inspire so much fan ardor with such flawed characters. Pompeo certainly spends a good part of her press time defending her boy-crazy, whiny alter ego. ''If Meredith Grey were a man,'' she insists, ''everyone would say, Oh, how interesting he is!'' But recent addition Eric Dane — a.k.a. Mark ''McSteamy'' Sloan — would like to see Pompeo's broke-up-a-marriage story line and raise her a no-discernible-redeeming-qualities character.
(Posted:12/20/06)
Source: EW
EW Magazine 'Entertainers of the Year' Photoshoot Outtakes
