After Dr. Derek Shepherd, the love of Meredith Grey’s (Ellen Pompeo) life played by Patrick Dempsey on “Grey’s Anatomy,” died a prolonged death as a result of a car accident in season 11, Shonda Rhimes’ long-running medical drama seemed to feel an inexplicable need to pair Meredith up with a new man as quickly as possible. (Pompeo ultimately weighed in on that impulse; we’ll circle back to her extraordinarily, wonderfully blunt reaction.) This came in the form of Dr. Nathan Riggs, a character played by Martin Henderson during the 12th season of “Grey’s Anatomy.” A military surgeon who works alongside the recently deployed Dr. April Kepner (Sarah Drew) and has long-standing beef with Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital’s trauma attending Dr. Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd), Nathan is a nice enough guy … but his romance with Meredith is forced and weird, and everybody knows it, including Pompeo.
When it comes to Nathan’s trajectory on “Grey’s Anatomy,” here’s the gist. After bringing a young boy in need of advanced medical help alongside April to Seattle from Jordan, Nathan ends up working at Grey Sloan Memorial as an attending cardiothoracic surgeon alongside Meredith’s half-sister, department chief Dr. Maggie Pierce (Kelly McCreary). Despite Maggie’s crush on Nathan — and enmity between him and Meredith, who tells Nathan that she sides with Owen before even knowing what their issue is — Meredith and Nathan end up hooking up and, after keeping it a secret, start publicly dating.
Everything changes in the season 13 finale of “Grey’s Anatomy” when it’s revealed that Dr. Megan Hunt (Abigail Spencer), Owen’s sister who served with him and Nathan in Iraq — and was engaged to Nathan — is alive, despite being presumed dead after a helicopter crash in the Middle East. After Meredith performs a groundbreaking abdominal wall transplant on Megan, Nathan brings her adopted son, Farouk (Bardia Seiri), to Seattle, and the two rekindle their romance; Owen and Nathan also make up, as their argument was about Megan in the first place. Meredith, who would do anything to learn that Derek is still alive, tells Nathan to be with Megan, and he, Megan, and Farouk move to Los Angeles to start a new life.
That’s what happens to Nathan Riggs on “Grey’s Anatomy,” more or less. So what was going on behind the scenes?
Ellen Pompeo didn’t love the love between Nathan Riggs and Meredith Grey on Grey’s Anatomy
If there’s one thing Ellen Pompeo is not going to do, it’s keep her opinions to herself (for further evidence of this, look at what she had to say about her real-life argument with Denzel Washington on the set of “Grey’s Anatomy”). In a 2018 feature in The Hollywood Reporter, Pompeo opened up about Patrick Dempsey’s dramatic season 11 exit; apparently, she felt as if executives prioritized him over her despite putting the “Grey” in “Grey’s Anatomy.” Pompeo even said that at one point she asked for a pay bump to put her salary above Dempsey, “because the show is ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and I’m Meredith Grey. They wouldn’t give it to me. And I could have walked away, so why didn’t I? It’s my show; I’m the number one.” Ultimately, Pompeo became the highest-paid woman on television at the time, earning over $20 million per year as the show’s star and executive producer.
After saying that she had a “nice chuckle” about the spiking ratings after Derek’s on-screen death, Pompeo revealed that she felt as if Martin Henderson’s Dr. Nathan Riggs was an unwelcome addition to the series on principle. “But the truth is, the ink wasn’t even dry on [Dempsey’s] exit papers before they rushed in a new guy,” Pompeo recalled, saying she was on vacation in Sicily and trying to relax when she started getting messages about potential love interests for Meredith in the upcoming 12th season.
“And they’re sending pictures,” Pompeo said. “I was like, ‘Are you people f***ing nuts? Why do you feel that you have to replace this person?’ I couldn’t believe how fast the studio and the network felt like they had to get a penis in there.” She continued, “We brought in Martin Henderson, but they didn’t love the storyline, so that ended.” She’s right, frankly; nobody loved that storyline. Nathan was a perfectly fine character, but the weird need to immediately pair up Meredith, a mother of three and pioneering general surgeon, was just … off-putting, and his character bore the brunt of that frustration. So how did Henderson feel about his exit?
Martin Henderson seemed fine leaving Grey’s Anatomy behind
To his absolute credit, Martin Henderson took Dr. Nathan Riggs’ exit in total stride. Both he and Shonda Rhimes spoke exclusively to Deadline in 2017 after Nathan’s final episode, “Danger Zone,” in season 14 … and both of them said glowing things about each other and the project.
“I loved that we were able to give Riggs a happy ending worthy of his character and talent,” Rhimes told the outlet before clarifying something: “As for Martin, this is not an ending for our relationship.” Rhimes and Henderson worked together on one of the showrunner’s rare flops, “Inside the Box,” so they had a shared history before “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Henderson, for his part, told interviewers Nellie Andreeva and Anthony D’Alessandro that he didn’t have any say in Nathan’s departure, but he understood that entirely. “I only had a short-term contract with the show,” he revealed. Henderson continued:
“This is my final year so I was expecting Nathan’s storyline to be wrapped up. Bringing in Megan and tying up loose ends, provided a reason. That was always intended when they brought Megan back with a twist. The triangle played out nicely, the way they gave perspective leading up to her disappearance, the mutual infidelity; the way it was handled was interesting. It’s been a couple of fun years on the show.”
As for potentially returning to “Grey’s Anatomy,” Henderson said that he felt like it was possible for both him and Nathan. “I would never close the door,” he said candidly. “In my mind, it’s been left open-ended enough.” After reiterating that he’d worked with Rhimes before, Henderson continued, “I think providing an exit for the character where there’s a possibility for him to return is always nice. It was always a short-term thing, and I was happy to spend a few years doing the show.”
As of this writing, Henderson hasn’t returned to “Grey’s Anatomy” — but weirder things have definitely happened on that show, so it’s not impossible! You can binge “Grey’s Anatomy” on Netflix and Hulu now.
