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Last night’s wild season 2 finale of Scandal featured a number of shocking revelations and a big moment for our girl Quinn. We caught up with Scandal creator and showrunner Shonda Rhimes after an Academy of Television Arts and Sciences cast reading of the finale to ask her a few questions. Be warned, though, if you haven’t seen the season finale of Scandal, there are only spoilers below.
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Last night on Oprah’s Next Chapter, TV maven Shonda Rhimes and EW Entertainer of the Year Kerry Washington sat down with Oprah Winfrey for a wide-ranging chat that covered everything from Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy to… a–holes. (Before you ask, yes, they semi-bleeped.)
Below were the five most revealing moments from the trio’s chat:
* Oprah learned about Scandal via Twitter. Good work, #Gladiators! Even someone like Oprah, who one would assume is the first to know about pretty much everything, gets TV suggestions via Twitter! “On my Twitter feed, everybody was talking about it, and I was like ‘What is this show?!’” revealed O. “So I started watching because of Twitter.” Meanwhile, Washington admitted that she only watches Scandal because of the cast’s live chats on the social media network. Otherwise, she says, “I don’t really like to watch my work when it’s done. It’s a little bit uncomfortable. I literally watch because I want to be able to chat with the fans.” READ FULL STORY »
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After the unfortunate passing of Seattle Grace’s longtime lothario Mark “McSteamy” Sloan in September, Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes reflected on the character in an obituary penned for Entertainment Weekly. For more stories behind this year’s top TV and movie moments, click here for EW.com’s Best of 2012: Behind the Scenes coverage.
By: Shonda Rhimes
A doctor shows up at Seattle Grace Hospital. He beds all the women. He sutures his own face. He wears a towel better than anyone can wear a towel in the history of wearing towels on television.
We call him McSteamy.
When Mark Sloan first appeared on Grey’s Anatomy in season 2, the original idea was to have him do one episode. Goodbye, Mark Sloan. But none of us planned on what would happen once we cast Eric Dane. His Mark Sloan wasn’t just flirty and handsome—Eric’s Mark Sloan was dirty and hot but also completely self-aware of what he was lacking in emotion and self-control. Eric’s Mark Sloan was smart enough to know he was a man-whore and sexy enough to make the audience believe in him anyway. From the moment ABC aired the scene in which Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) dubbed him McSteamy, I began to get letters from fans. And emails from friends. And phone calls from my mother. It was clear that we were going to need to see Mark Sloan back at Seattle Grace again.
Mark Sloan has been one of my all-time favorite characters to write. He’s the male surgical version of the hooker with the heart of gold. Yes, he seduces so many nurses that they form an actual organization dedicated to eradicating him (Nurses United Against Mark Sloan!). But he also helps a lonely man change his gender. He rebuilds the face of Jane Doe. He fixes cleft palates and lionitis bone deformities, and builds a little boy a pair of ears. He performs double arm transplants. He helps Callie (Sara Ramirez) recognize that her feelings for another woman are not something to be ignored. Okay, yes, he sleeps with his best friend’s wife. But he also supports his daughter when she chooses to put her baby up for adoption. Yes, he breaks his penis having sex with Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh). But he also falls madly in love with her. He’s a good man, Mark Sloan.
Well, he was a good man.
Last week, Mark Sloan succumbed to injuries sustained in the plane crash that took the life of fellow surgeon Alexandra Caroline Grey. By the time he died, he was no longer just a hot naked guy in a towel. He’d become more than McSteamy. Mark had grown to become a mentor, a true best friend, a father, and the love of Lexie Grey’s life.
After six seasons, the end of Mark Sloan was a giant loss for me as a writer and for the show. And for the fans. I like to believe that Mark is with Lexie somewhere. That those two characters are spending eternity together, getting to have the relationship they were never able to have when they were alive. Because, as Lexie’s dying words told us, she and Mark were “meant to be.”
Mark Everett Sloan died on September 27, 2012. He is survived by his daughter Sofia; his baby mamas, Callie and Arizona (Jessica Capshaw); his fellow doctors at Seattle Grace; and every woman who ever imagined what it might be like to have a little McSteamy between her sheets.
He will be missed by all.
Read more:
More of EW.com’s Best of 2012 (Behind the Scenes) coverage
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ boss Shonda Rhimes explains Eric Dane’s exit
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ season finale: Boss explains two shocking exits
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ star Jessica Capshaw on Arizona shocker: This is not ‘a story of defeat’
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Last Thursday was a mournful television evening because it’s when Mark Sloan, a.k.a. McSteamy, was pulled off life support and died during the dramatic season 9 premiere of Grey’s Anatomy. In tonight’s new episode, “Remember the Time,” viewers will learn how Sloan went from alive in last May’s season finale to dead just a week ago.
As a eulogy to the late McSteamy — and an exclusive to EW — Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes penned an obituary for Sloan, who she calls “one of my all-time favorite characters to write.” (Rhimes is pictured here with Eric Dane, who played Mark Sloan on Grey’s.) You can read Rhimes full obituary in the Oct. 12 issue of Entertainment Weekly – on stands now — but take a gander at an excerpt of it here now:
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As we head into Private Practice‘s sixth season this evening, there are so many questions: Who will Addison (Kate Walsh) choose — Jake (Benjamin Bratt) or Sam (Taye Diggs)? What will happen after Walsh leaves in 13 episodes? Will Addison get a happy ending? Will the series live on after her departure?
EW recently nabbed a little time with the series’ star to discuss the upcoming season — how it felt making it to 100 episodes, what will happen for Addison this season, how she’d like to see the character go out, and much, much more. Walsh, for her part, is feeling good about her decision to leave. “I can’t help but look back and be in the moment and look at the future all at once, which is a little crazy making,” she says. “But it’s exactly where I think I’m supposed to be.” And, she says, the season is really all about all the characters: “Huge news happens to every character!” Interesting.
Tune into the season 6 premiere of Private Practice tonight at 10 p.m. on ABC, but first, let Kate Walsh preview what’s coming to Oceanside this season.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did it feel to make it to the 100th episode of Private Practice, which airs later this season?
KATE WALSH: Yeah, it’s huge! It was funny, leading up to it, I was like, “Oh, we’ve got that 100th episode celebration thing at lunch at 12,” and then I got very unexpectedly emotional, like very touched and moved, thinking, Oh my gosh! You can’t help but think back. From the beginning on Grey’s Anatomy, who would have anticipated a spin-off? And then, how rare do spin-offs even work, and then we had the writer’s strike. Lo and behold, here we are in our sixth season.
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Eric Dane’s recently announced exit from Grey’s Anatomy may have caught fans by surprise, but creator Shonda Rhimes wasn’t quite as blindsided.
“It was a thing that Eric had been thinking about for a while, but it felt like the right time to him” she tells EW. “I love Eric, and Eric and I have been working together for a very long time, so it was bittersweet. I’m happy he’s going to go on and do other things, but I’m really sad to not be able to work with him every day.”
Creatively, the timing was also right. After last season’s plane crash, which claimed the life of Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh), many fates — including that of Dane’s character Mark Sloane — were left up in the air. And though Dane is slated to return for two episodes in the upcoming ninth season, Rhimes says his imminent appearance should not necessarily be considered a nod to his fate on the show, especially in light of the unique format of the season’s first episodes.
“When we start the season, we are ahead enough in time where we see the outcome of lots of things. And in the second episode of the season, there’s rewind — we go backwards — to where they’re still in the forest,” she shares. “So you see what happened and in the next episode, you see how we get there. That was a really great experiment for us, and we think it turned out really really well.” This approach, she says, allowed them to tackle the crash aftermath in a way that felt different from what fans saw after the equally traumatizing hospital shooting a few seasons ago. READ FULL STORY »
James Hibberd
@James_Hibberd
Lynette Rice
@EWLynette
