On Thursday, February 28, Grey's Anatomy will air its 332nd episode, officially making it the longest-running medical drama in TV history. It's hard to imagine a world without this show, especially now that it's in its fifteenth season. After all, four of its current characters—Meredith Grey, Miranda Bailey, Richard Weber, and Alex Karev—have been with us since the very beginning. You've probably know them longer than some of your friends.
It's truly fitting, then, that one of those four—Chandra Wilson (Dr. Miranda Bailey)—is directing this historic episode. She describes the process of preparing for this week's show as "exciting and scary," given its significance. "It's the silly pressure you put on yourself," she tells Glamour. "But this was my twentieth episode of Grey's that I've directed, so I must be doing OK."
So what can viewers expect? "I had all of my ideas about things that I thought [were] important and that the audience might want to see and what would be a treat. But then my writers and my producers had another idea for what they thought it was about," she says. "And we came up with something that I think, for the audience, is gonna say, 'Guess what guys? We continue. There's more to come. Nothing is over. Nothing is ended.'"
Wilson says longtime fans of the show should keep their eyes peeled for special details that may or may not call back to Grey's history. "I know it was important to me to plant some [Easter eggs] because I think those things are so much fun for fans," she says. I personally have my fingers crossed for a classic Bailey monologue, though my ultimate dream would be a Cristina Yang appearance, which probably won't happen. Maybe Bailey will just say her name—that should tide us over until Killing Eve season two premieres in April.
One of the greatest things about a show's staying on the air as long as Grey's in the era of streaming is it has created a whole new generation of fans. "I had a young girl [around 20 years old] tell me, 'My roommates and I watch [together].' And that's what happened at the beginning of our show: People would talk to us about getting together with their roommates or getting together with their family," Wilson says. "And it's a show that people don't watch by themselves. They usually pull somebody else in with them. And I think that's definitely what gives us our longevity."
She continues, "We're like a group effort. We're an ensemble show, and people watch it as an ensemble and they are so invested in what happens to these characters. So whether it's the OGs or whether it's our new characters that come in, even if they don't want to like somebody, they still stick around and say, 'OK, but you know? Let me see. Let me see.'"
So does an OG like Wilson have a favorite Grey's Anatomy moment? She loves the episodes in season six when a shooter is roaming the hospital and Dr. Bailey is trapped in a room with a patient (played by Mandy Moore). Her number-one favorite, though, is the pilot. "That's the one that really established what this show was going to be, who these characters were," she says. "And if I ever get confused about how I think Bailey should respond to something, I always think about that pilot and who she thought she was in the pilot—because that's who she still thinks she is."
Tune into Wilson's episode of Grey's tonight at 8:00 P.M. ET on ABC.
