Kate Walsh returned to “Grey’s Anatomy” as Dr. Addison Montgomery on Thursday in an emotional episode titled “Hotter than Hell.”
After Addison breaks down in an elevator with Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) because she doesn’t feel Derek Shepherd’s spirit in the halls of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, Meredith tells her late husband’s ex-wife: “He is here. And he’s in his children. And they are very real.”
Meredith invites Addison to come and meet Zola, Bailey, and Ellis, and we get to see it happen in the episode’s final scene. If you had dried your eyes and recovered from Addison’s emotional moment in the elevator, this scene probably had you crying a new round of happier tears.
Jamie Denbo, the episode’s writer, spoke with Insider about what it was like to write these scenes and then watch them come to life.
Addison meeting her late ex’s kids for the first time is a loaded moment for both her and Meredith
Denbo said that Addison meeting Meredith’s children was an act of “ultimate forgiveness” between the two women who have so much complicated, and often negative, history between them.
As longtime “Grey’s Anatomy” fans will recall, Meredith doesn’t know that Derek is married when she gets involved with him in season one, but the affair does make the cracks in Derek and Addison’s marriage deeper. Addison places blame directly on Meredith for the affair when she shakes her hand and says, “And you must be the woman who’s been screwing my husband.”
So much time has passed, and with Derek dead, Addison and Meredith’s relationship is bound to transform.
“The ultimate forgiveness, the most vulnerable you can be, is to allow your children to be exposed to someone,” Denbo said. “You don’t let your children connect with someone you don’t trust, love, forgive, and, to me, that’s the ultimate kindness.”
Denbo and Walsh know each other from their days in comedy together, and the writer, who invited Walsh to her wedding to “The Big Bang Theory” actor John Ross Bowie, told Insider she was happy that Addison’s introduction to the Shepherd children allowed the world to see Walsh’s improv skills.
“For those of you who haven’t done deep dives on Kate Walsh, she’s one of the funniest people on the planet,” Denbo said. “And the entire ice cream at the table sequence when she’s hanging out with the kids is Kate hanging out with the kids as Addison. She’s not leaving her character.”
Denbo was on the “Grey’s Anatomy” set for the filming of that scene and said it “was so touching and loving and funny” to watch it all unfold.
The episode’s final scene is “the ultimate gesture on behalf of Meredith to say, ‘We’re good. The past is the past. We’ve loved, we’ve lost. Look at all we’ve been through,'” according to Denbo.
Plus, Walsh confirmed to “Entertainment Tonight” that Addison was still happily married to Jake (the “Private Practice” star Benjamin Bratt), so she probably hadn’t mused about what could’ve been with Derek for a long time. There is truly no bad blood for the interns to talk about anymore.
