When a show has been on the air as long as Grey’s Anatomy has been, the cast and crew are bound to stir up some drama over the years. For those who haven’t been tuning in every Thursday night for the last two decades-plus and keeping track, Grey’s Anatomy is, in fact, still on the air and is currently in the middle of season 21. That’s 21 seasons of medical emergencies and all the dramatic moments that go with them. It’s also 21 seasons of behind-the-scenes backstage emergencies and the (dare I say) even more dramatic moments they cause. The lore runs deep, and it’s a lot to untangle.

Any show as big and popular as Grey’s Anatomy is bound to have some behind-the-scenes mess, but the Grey’s situation is some really messy mess. Within the lore of Grey’s Anatomy feuds, we have professional jealousy, physical fights, out-of-the-blue firings, and more. Honestly, I’m just waiting for creator Shonda Rhimes to make her next show about the behind-the-scenes drama at Grey’s Anatomy because there’s so much to mine here. Let’s all take a trip down memory lane to Seattle Grace/Seattle Grace Mercy West/Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital with this explainer on the biggest Grey’s Anatomy cast feuds.

Grey’s Anatomy Cast Feuds, Explained

Katherine Heigl’s Feud

While a lot of these feuds took place behind the scenes, Katherine Heigl’s tensions were all pretty public, mostly because she was really public about them. She won an Emmy for her role of Dr. Izzie Stevens in 2007, but in 2008 she withdrew her name from consideration for the award because she felt she was not “given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination.” It was a shady way for her to dunk on the show’s writers and Shonda was pretty pissed off about it.

But Katherine continued to air all her dirty Grey’s laundry out in the open in 2009 during an appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman. She told him that the actors’ long workdays on set were “cruel and mean.” Katherine didn’t have to endure those long days much longer because she requested to be let out of her contract early and left the show in the middle of the season in 2010.

In 2022, Katherine spoke to The Washington Post about the whole thing and said, “At the time, I was just quickly told to shut the fuck up. The more I said I was sorry, the more they wanted it. The more terrified and scared I was of doing something wrong, the more I came across like I had really done something horribly wrong.”

Isaiah Washington’s Feud

This was the first big controversy surrounding the Grey’s set, and one of the most serious. In the book How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy, writer Lynette Rice reported that tensions were really high between stars Isaiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey during the first couple seasons of the show. During a late-night shoot on October 9, 2006, they started to argue over Patrick arriving to set late. Allegedly, it soon escalated into a full-blown physical fight.

One of the writers of the show, Harry Werksman, reported that Isaiah pushed Patrick against a wall and told him he couldn’t “talk to me the way you talk to” their co-star T.R. Knight. Only instead of referring to T.R. by his name, he used a homophobic slur instead.

The incident got leaked to the press at the time, and Isaiah issued an apology, while the situation prompted T.R. to publicly come out. Although things probably were still pretty uncomfortable on set after the whole thing, it seemed like maybe the cast could move past it. That is, until the 2007 Golden Globes. In the press room for the event, Isaiah stepped up to the microphone and denied the whole thing ever happened. And he used the slur again while doing so. The whole thing was so misguided and weird and inappropriate, and it all led to Isaiah getting fired from the show.

T.R. Knight’s Feud

Meanwhile T.R. Knight had his own personal tensions with the producers of the show. He made a surprising exit from Grey’s at the end of season 5 after getting a lot less screen time earlier in the season. We still don’t know all the specific details of this feud, but he told Entertainment Weekly that he asked to leave the show after there was a “breakdown of communication” between him and Shonda Rhimes.

“My five-year experience proved to me that I could not trust any answer that was given [about his character George],” he said. “And with respect, I’m going to leave it at that.”

I just want to know who’s responsible for paying me emotional damages for the heart-wrenching goodbye we got for George in the season 5 finale.

Patrick Dempsey’s Feud

When Derek Shepherd (spoiler alert) died, it sent shockwaves through the series and Grey’s was genuinely never the same again. But it turns out, his death was not just for plot reasons. According to sources in How To Save A Life, he was “terrorizing the set” at the end of his run on the show. Executive producer James D. Parriott said, “Some cast members had all sorts of PTSD with him. He had this hold on the set where he knew he could stop production and scare people.”

Those issues on set included ones with his biggest co-star, Meredith Grey herself, Ellen Pompeo. “She would get angry that he wasn’t working as much,” co-executive producer Jeannine Renshaw said. “She was very big on having things be fair.  [Ellen] just didn’t like that Patrick would complain that ‘I’m here too late’ or ‘I’ve been here too long’ when she had twice as many scenes in the episode as he did.”

Ellen definitely won that battle, since Patrick was cut from the show in season 11.

Bonus Feud: Elisabeth Finch

She’s not a cast member, but how can we finish this list without at least a mention of Elisabeth Finch? The former Grey’s writer – and subject of the Peacock documentary Anatomy of Lies – lied to her colleagues about having cancer. Not only did she lie about her own medical history, but she also used this fake medical history to write stories for the show and garner attention for them. So now pretty much everyone she’s ever worked with is, justifiably, in a feud with her. It’s perhaps the darkest and juiciest Grey’s drama of all.