Natalie Morales has addressed her shocking Grey’s Anatomy death.
“Guys, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not dead,” Morales, 40, said in a Friday, October 10, TikTok video. “I’m right here. Don’t worry No matter what you’ve heard or what you’ve read in the comments of all my other videos, I didn’t die.”
She added, “I’m right here. You can come see me any time you want. Thank you for worrying though.”
Morales recently played pediatric surgeon Dr. Monica Beltran on Grey’s. Her character — spoiler alert — died in the Thursday, October 9, season 22 premiere. Monica had been among the Grey Sloan Memorial doctors injured in a fatal explosion on the operating room floor of the hospital.
While fans were stunned to learn of Monica’s death, so were the cast members themselves.
“They don’t tell us a lot. It was to the point over the summer, I had texted Chris Carmack, who plays Link, and I was like, ‘Hey, man, so do you make it or what’s going on?’ And, like, he didn’t know either,” Anthony Hill, who plays Dr. Winston Ndugu, exclusively told Us Weekly on Friday. “A lot of us aren’t really sure about all the details, and they kind of keep that from us — probably on purpose — because some of us talk a lot.”
He continued, “I think it was surprising once we got the script, which was right before we started filming, and then, it was sad because you’re thinking about it from a perspective of your coworkers [and] not just characters. Stepping into the characters, of course, it’s sad and it’s tragic, but then there’s another layer of sadness because Natalie is my buddy, and it’s, like, ‘Oh man, I loved working with her and hanging out.’”
Onscreen, Monica’s death will pose its own set of “curve balls” for the surviving Grey Sloan doctors.
“There’s a lot of challenges for the people who survived the blast for lots of different reasons,” Hill, 37, hinted to Us. “Everybody has their own traumas from that experience in that blast, and then, picking up the pieces and trying to literally put the hospital back together and figure out how to move forward is going to be a tough dynamic to navigate for everybody and health physically, mentally and emotionally.”
Hill’s Winston, specifically, stepped into support alongside Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone) and Jules Millen (Adelaide Kane) in the premiere while they each navigated their respective grief.
“That was a very emotional scene for Addie to play, so it’s a layered scene for her,” Hill explained of Winston and Jules’ scene in a supply closet. “I just found myself trying to be present with my acting coworker and [tried] to help [her] give the best performance [she] could. … It’s heated, like, it’s charged. I don’t know if we were aware of that fully, but seeing it play out [in the episode] was really beautiful.”
Hill also addressed fans’ speculation that his character might have shared a near-kiss with Kane’s Jules. (While Winston is the head of cardiothoracic surgery, Jules is in the middle of her residency and, thus, his subordinate.)
“Winston was trying to be there for Jules. He sees she’s having a breakdown. He cares about her. He knows [there are] levels of trauma that are indescribable,” Hill said. “What happens through that [are some things] you can’t control, and I think there was an energy between them that was undeniable in that moment. So were either of them going in for a kiss? Not purposefully, but I think what ended up evolving in that scene was something magnetic and special that wasn’t planned.”
Grey’s Anatomy airs on ABC Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET.
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