GREY’S ANATOMY: Chyler Leigh Teases THE MUSICAL EVENT

GREY’S ANATOMY has never shied away from big, buzzworthy stunts, but tonight’s hour may top all of those: a musical episode.

Considering the vocal talent among the cast — especially Tony-winner Sara Ramirez (Callie), whom “Song Beneath the Song” is centered on — GREY’S ANATOMY: THE MUSICAL EVENT isn’t that big of a stretch. The actors had apparently made a potential musical episode a running joke on set…until they found out one was in the works.

“I thought it was a joke,” Chyler Leigh (Lexie) admitted, of her initial reaction to the announcement. “We have been joking about it for the last few seasons, just going, ‘Oh, yeah, I just can’t wait for that musical episode,’ kinda just really, genuinely joking about it. And thinking, ‘Oh, singing and dancing, and cutting people down the hallway, wouldn’t that be funny?'”

As it turns out, even once the news became official, Leigh was still in the dark.

“I wasn’t present at the table read when [GREY’S ANATOMY creator] Shonda [Rhimes] mentioned to everybody, ‘Hey, we’re doing a musical episode,’ so when I did come back everybody was like, ‘Are you excited about the musical?’ And I was like, ‘Ha ha, that’s funny.’ And they were all, ‘No, really.’ And I’m all, ‘What?!’ So, it was definitely a shock.”

Leigh says her fears about the logistics of the hour diminished when she heard how the series planned on tackling the singing.

“Shonda explained how she wanted to do it,” Leigh explained. “[She explained] it wasn’t singing, dancing, cutting people down the hallway, and then we were kind of really able to embrace the journey and just say ‘Wow.’ And obviously, Shonda wrote it…and you know whenever Shonda writes something, it’s gonna be pretty huge. And it was. Emotionally, it’s an extremely powerful episode. And I’m really, really excited to see everything put together. We were so proud of each other and of all the work that we did. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how it all ties together in one episode — I think it should have been two, personally — but it’ll make for some really great DVD stuff.”

And yes, Leigh will be singing in “Song Beneath the Song.”

“I sing ‘Breathe (2 AM)’ by Anna Nalick, and Sarah Drew (April) and I sing the chorus on a song called ‘Grace’ [by Kate Havnevik], which is really beautiful, Sara sings all the verses on that,” Leigh teased. “And there are a couple of other songs that I sing on, too.”

Are you excited for GREY’S ANATOMY: THE MUSICAL EVENT?

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