You can love and hate the same person in different worlds.
Grey’s Anatomy is a long-running medical drama. As the genre suggests, the show is full of different characters who share a common storyline as long as they have their own little ones. And it’s no wonder that some of them are more fan-favorite than others.
For example, there are Meredith, Derek, Cristina, Izzie and many others who have become the most popular over the years. Even after some of them have left the show.
But the list of the best is actually not complete without Dr. Preston Burke. The character was there for the first 3 seasons and frankly made an impact on the fans.
“He felt like an actual person. We knew things like him liking jazz, being a Tulane alum, etc without those being his dominant personality traits. Imo it shows how badly written the characters are now in comparison. There aren’t any little things to make them feel real,” Redditor pawspawsmeow said.
The fans all say with one voice that the way his character was written was actually the most professional and just made the fans like him.
And with Isaiah Washington’s brilliant acting, it was even easier. Fans claim that his character actually had on-screen chemistry with almost every other person in the show.
But that all seemed to fade away when the true personality of not Burke, but Washington was revealed on the set. His last appearance on the show was in season 3. His character had to leave the show as a result of a failed marriage. But the real reason was much more dramatic.
It was revealed that in 2007, Washington used a homophobic slur in reference to his co-star T.R. Knight, who played Dr. George O’Malley on the show.
This happened while he was in an argument with Patrick Dempsey aka Dr. Derek Shepherd.
Of course, that kind of behavior couldn’t go unnoticed, so he was fired from the show. Needless to say, the news caused a ton of hate towards the actor on social media. And to this day.
“He was definitely one of the reasons I got hooked on the show early on. I was super disappointed when I found out about the actor and his problematic behavior. But I can still appreciate the character as a complex and dynamic Individual,” Redditor smolcats19 said.
Of course, this kind of behavior should not be tolerated on the set. But what to do with the love the character generates? Well, the answer is simple: the fandom just had to differentiate between reality and fiction.