Martin Henderson has his hands full with Virgin River — now streaming new episodes on Netflix — but he’s not ruling out a return to Grey’s Anatomy, the other hit TV series on his filmography.
“I haven’t given it a lot of thought, just because I’ve been so committed and busy with Virgin River and some other stuff and life,” Henderson told Deadline recently. “But I think [Grey’s creator] Shonda Rhimes has always been really supportive of me; we’ve actually worked together a bunch of times on different things, so I would always be open to the possibility. Again, if it fitted in with whatever else was going on in my life at the time and my career.”
Before his work on Grey’s Anatomy, Henderson starred in the 2009 ABC pilot Inside the Box and the 2011 ABC series Off the Map, both of which Rhimes produced. And after Patrick Dempsey left Grey’s in 2015, producers of the ABC medical drama brought in Henderson to play Dr. Nathan Riggs, a new love interest for Ellen Pompeo’s Dr. Meredith Grey.
Henderson is open to another stint on Grey’s “as long as I felt that the character had something to do and I could give something, because I don’t think they really knew what to do with Nathan,” the actor told Deadline.
He went on: “It was almost like a stopgap measure with the departure of Derek [Shepherd, Dempsey’s character]. It was like, oh, we need a love interest. And so he, and by virtue, I was dropped into this world, but I don’t think he was ever that defined. If I were to go back, I would have to make sure that there was a really clear plan for why he was there.”
Pompeo, for her part, expressed her frustration with the Meredith-Nathan storyline in a 2018 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I was on vacation in Sicily, decompressing — it was a long working relationship [with Dempsey] and it was a tumultuous end and I needed a moment to just chill with some rosé — and they’re calling me, going, ‘What do you think of this guy?’ ‘What do you think of this guy?’ And they’re sending pictures,” the Grey’s star said. “I was like, ‘Are you people f***ing nuts? Why do you feel that you have to replace this person?’ I couldn’t believe how fast the studio and the network felt like they had to get a penis in there. We brought in Martin Henderson, but they didn’t love the storyline, so that ended.”
Henderson left Grey’s midway through Season 14, with Riggs embarking on a rekindled relationship with Megan Hunt (Abigail Spencer). Then the actor moved on to Virgin River, on which he plays Jack Sheridan opposite Alexandra Breckinridge as Mel Monroe. The romantic drama’s sixth season hit Netflix on Thursday, December 19.
Grey’s Anatomy, Season 22 Midseason Premiere, Thursday, March 6, 2025, 10/9c, ABC