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If you’ve read TVLine’s fall preview, you already know that Grey’s Anatomy’s Bailey has not scrubbed in for the last time at Grey Sloan. But when Chandra Wilson’s alter ego returns to the hospital, things will be different. They will have to be, because she herself will be different.
The former chief “got really tired of carrying Grey Sloan on her shoulders” in Season 18, showrunner Krista Vernoff reminds us, “and she made a decision to step away for her sanity and her well-being” (in so doing, passing off the job to Meredith).
In Season 19, the question becomes, what is her next step? How does she move forward? “One of the conversations with [series creator] Shonda [Rhimes] has been for a long time, ‘What does a very ambitious person do with all of that ambition when they sort of reach the top rung of where they want to go?’” Vernoff relates. “With that, we really looked at, ‘What does a whole human being need to feel successful in life? When you’re driven by ambition and you’ve reached the top of your career, where else can that ambition be applied?’
“For Bailey, it’s in so many areas,” she continues. It may also be a case of, in some ways, more being less. The key may lie in “finding the joy in taking a lesser title at work in favor of having a richer, happier life.”
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