Shonda Rhimes admits to killing off character on ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ‘Scandal,’ or ‘Private Practice’ because of actor

It is very much an internet thing to do to freak out by anything related to Shonda Rhimes and killing off characters. While it doesn’t happen on a George R.R. Martin level, it is a fairly regular occurrence on many of her shows.

What’s interesting about this story is that we’re not even talking about a dead character in the present, but instead a dead character in the past. While on “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore” this week promoting her new book Year of Yes, Rhimes admitted that she has killed off someone on a show before because she did not get along with the actor. Remember that the character was killed off, so you can stop with your Katherine Heigl conspiracy theories now.

Shonda said that she didn’t want to name names on who it was, and we’re not going to speculate too much on specifics here, either, since we’re not in a position to know. However, we will say that you can go ahead and rule out “How to Get Away with Murder” actors since she is not the primary showrunner over there. Pete Nowalk is. He would be the one to make the decisions as to who to kill off.

Some of the more-notable actors to have seen their characters killed off on Shonda-produced shows include Jeffrey Dean Morgan, T.R. Knight, Patrick Dempsey, Chyler Leigh, and Eric Dane of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Tim Daly on “Private Practice,” or Columbus Short on “Scandal.” That’s just a small sample. We’ll leave some of the speculation for you in the comments.

The biggest thing that we’re surprised about here is that Rhimes even answered the question at all, given that she usually maintains a mantra of “what happens in Shondaland, stays in Shondaland” when it comes to drama behind the scenes.

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