“Cristina Yang is one of the great characters ever, ever, ever on television.”
“I had not done any television casting.
I had cast a handful of pilots,” Lowy recalls.
Sandra Oh; Chandra Wilson; Kerry Washington.Credit:Frank Ockenfels/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty; Bob D’Amico/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty; Craig Sjodin/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
“It was the first time I ever tried to do anything in episodic television.”
ABC sent her the pilot for a show calledSurgeons(the working title).
I’m not going to do a medical show.
Sandra Oh on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.Frank Ockenfels/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
And yet,Sandra Ohdidn’t technically audition for the part.
“We didn’t really want to test other women.
We just wanted to offer it to her.”
Patrick Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.Craig Sjodin/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
“And Sandra was an offer.”
“Ellen had a deal at the internet, and so they wanted her for the show.
We were fine with that,” Lowy says.
Chandra Wilson; Kristin Chenoweth.Frank Ockenfels/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty; Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
“We weren’t going to get Rob Lowe.
And they weren’t sure about Patrick Dempsey.
He had to read, he had to do a test with Ellen.”
Kerry Washington on ‘Scandal’.Mitch Haaseth/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
Spoiler: He passed that test.
“When I met for my interview, Shonda just told me, ‘Linda, I love your casting.
So I’m not going to give anybody a last name.
Guillermo Diaz on ‘Scandal’.Nicole Wilder/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
It’s all ethnicities for every role.
I don’t have anything.
So how’d they end up with Wilson?
Viola Davis on ‘How to Get Away With Murder’.ABC
And even though it was the complete opposite of what Shonda wanted, I looked at her audition.
I was completely mesmerized.
I took the tape out of the machine.
James Pickens Jr. on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.Liliane Lathan/ABC via Getty
I remember walking down the hall with the tape.
I walked into Shonda’s office and I said, ‘You have to look at this right now.’
“Chandra was so nervous.
The cast of ‘Private Practice’.Vivian Zink/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
She was like, ‘She’s one of my idols,'” Lowy says, referencing Chenoweth.
However, it was Wilson who got the part.
She gave the best audition I have ever seen,” Lowy recalls.
“Not just the words, it was everything.
It was her calmness.
I just have never seen anything quite that spectacular.”
Surprisingly, Washington did not do a chemistry read withTony Goldwyn, the Fitz to her Olivia.
“We never did a chemistry read,” Lowy says.
“I could see it in my head.
We were all in agreement that these two would work.
And also, I’m not sure we had the time.”
But according to Lowy, the part belonged toGuillermo Diazas soon as he read a particular monologue.
“Guillermo Diaz gave a brilliant audition for Huck,” Lowy says.
“That was an offer,” Lowy says.
It was an amazing moment to get her.
She was doing movies, and so it was a lot of finessing.
And it is all about timing.
You got to get the timing right to get the actors sometimes.
Annalise would be proud.
Knight) first surgery, we’ll say that much.
Can I just see if we can only test him and not be bothered?’
And he let us do it."
“We cast that whole thing without a script,” Lowy says.
So when someone like Tim Daly comes in, orTaye Diggs, then she could build out the character.
I think we had most of that cast before we had the script.
So that made it a little bit easier.
