Grey’s Anatomy follows the basic premise of medical dramas and focuses on the lives of surgical interns, residents, and attendings as they do their best to balance their personal and professional lives, which end up overlapping and making way for a lot of drama inside and outside the hospital. Meredith Grey has been the lead of Grey’s Anatomy since the first episode, so viewers have seen her go from an intern at Seattle Grace Hospital to head of general surgery at the same hospital, now named Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, but the road to that hasn’t been easy. Meredith has either witnessed or been directly involved in a number of tragedies and tough situations at work, which have led her to be fired. In fact, there have been eight other characters who have also been fired just like Meredith.
Meredith Grey
Played by Ellen Pompeo
Meredith Grey has been fired twice on Grey’s Anatomy. Both of the reasons for those firings, however, were very different.
First, Meredith was fired after tampering with Derek Shepherd’s (Patrick Dempsey) Alzheimer’s trial. While Derek worked on finding a cure for Alzheimer’s following the death of Meredith’s mother, Ellis Grey, Adele’s (Richard’s wife) condition began to worsen, and she was put on the trial. In order for her to get the active agent and not the placebo, Meredith switched the envelopes and tainted the trial in the process, which got her fired. In addition to that, this decision almost cost her and Derek the adoption of their daughter, Zola, but ultimately, they were able to adopt her, and she returned to the hospital.
Years later, Meredith was fired again due to insurance fraud. In order to help a patient suffering from lymphoma who needed surgery and years of treatment and follow-up, Meredith listed her as her own daughter so that the insurance would cover the surgery. This situation turned out to be a lot more complicated, and she was not only fired but she was also sent to jail for a while.
Alex Karev
Played by Justin Chambers
Like Meredith, Alex Karev was also fired twice. At one point, Alex left Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital to join a private practice with Oliver Lebackes, with the purpose of making enough money to pay off his medical school debts. However, Maggie Pierce accidentally revealed that Alex was looking for a spot on the board, so Lebackes fired him, but he was hired back as an attending at Grey Sloan.
Years later, Alex, along with Richard Webber, was fired for covering up Meredith’s insurance fraud, which led him to apply for the Chief of Surgery spot at Pacific Northwest General Hospital, which he got. Sometime later, Alex left Grey’s Anatomy as he moved to Kansas with Izzie Stevens and their twins, as he didn’t want them to grow up in a broken home, as he did.
Izzie Stevens
Played by Katherine Heigl
Izzie Stevens went through a lot during her time in Grey’s Anatomy, and the icing on this chaotic cake was being fired. After dealing with the death of her fiancé Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and her best friend George O’Malley (T.R. Knight), and battling cancer, Izzie seemed to be ready to get her life back on track. One mistake derailed her again though.
After accidentally administering the wrong dosage of medicine to a patient, which led her to not get the kidney transplant she desperately needed, and the hospital going through budget cuts due to the Seattle Grace/Mercy West merger, Izzie was fired. Now free of cancer and her relationship with Alex over, Izzie had no reason to stay in Seattle and left, though she eventually got back together with Alex after he learned she used the frozen embryos from before her cancer treatment and had twins.
Though Heigl had expressed interest in returning to the show to close out her character’s storyline at a later date, creator Shonda Rhimes didn’t invite the actress back. There have long been rumors about a falling out between the two after Heigl declined to submit herself for an Emmy nomination because she didn’t feel the “material warranted one.” When asked about Heigl potentially returning by TV Guide after Heigl left the show in 2010, Rhimes made it clear that she wouldn’t be asking the actress to return to play Izzie Stevens:
”It was really nice to hear her appreciating the show. We are on a track we have been planning, and the idea of changing that track is not something we are interested in right now”.
