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Here’s the ‘complicated and difficult’ reason Arizona and April left Grey’s Anatomy

Published 11:26 2 Oct 2018 BST

Keeley Ryan

Here’s the ‘complicated and difficult’ reason Arizona and April left Grey’s Anatomy

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After more than a decade, Grey's Anatomy fans are used to plenty of casting changes.

But that didn't make it any easier when it was announced that Dr. Arizona Robbins and Dr. April Kepner would be checking out of Grey Sloan Memorial. The exit of the characters - played by Jessica Capshaw and Sarah Drew - proved to be massively controversial, with their co-stars even admitting they were gutted by their departures. Showrunner Krista Vernoff has now spoken about the controversial exits on Variety's podcast Remote Controlled - and the "complicated and difficult" decision.

She said:

"Look, I came back in season 14. I had been gone since season 7. When I arrived, we had 14 series regulars.

"That's an unmanageable number of series regulars to write for. Nothing has time to land. It wasn't manageable.

"So I made some complicated and difficult decisions last season, but still I've got 10 series regulars who have been there for a long time and that allows me to bring in some guest stars to play with those series regulars.

"The guest stars are often key to keeping things fresh and alive, giving people new energy. New characters to bounce off of."

She went on to admit that she "approached it wrong initially" and began reading the Twitter backlash, which she found hard to not take personally. She continued:

"I talked to John Wells, who is a really generous man and mentor to me sometimes, and said, 'Oh my god, they're just killing me', and he just laughed and said, 'What the f**k are you doing on Twitter? Are you insane?'
"And then Shonda [Rhimes] basically said the same thing to me.

"You can't stay sane, because one person could not have a job and could spend all day on Twitter hammering you. It can become deeply demoralising, and as a writer, your brain is really, really, really impacted by the written word.

"This is what I've noticed about myself and my fellow writers. Words spoken don't get into me the way words written do. So at a certain point, I just had to mute the mentions."

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Grey's Anatomy

After more than a decade, Grey's Anatomy fans are used to plenty of casting changes.

She said:

"Look, I came back in season 14. I had been gone since season 7. When I arrived, we had 14 series regulars.

"That's an unmanageable number of series regulars to write for. Nothing has time to land. It wasn't manageable.

"So I made some complicated and difficult decisions last season, but still I've got 10 series regulars who have been there for a long time and that allows me to bring in some guest stars to play with those series regulars.

"The guest stars are often key to keeping things fresh and alive, giving people new energy. New characters to bounce off of."

She went on to admit that she "approached it wrong initially" and began reading the Twitter backlash, which she found hard to not take personally. She continued:

"I talked to John Wells, who is a really generous man and mentor to me sometimes, and said, 'Oh my god, they're just killing me', and he just laughed and said, 'What the f**k are you doing on Twitter? Are you insane?'
"And then Shonda [Rhimes] basically said the same thing to me.

"You can't stay sane, because one person could not have a job and could spend all day on Twitter hammering you. It can become deeply demoralising, and as a writer, your brain is really, really, really impacted by the written word.

"This is what I've noticed about myself and my fellow writers. Words spoken don't get into me the way words written do. So at a certain point, I just had to mute the mentions."