Chyler Leigh is getting candid about which Grey’s Anatomy story lines were not her favorites for her character, Lexie Grey.
“The break the penis story line,” Leigh, 42, said on the Monday, December 9, episode of the “Call It What It Is” podcast. “It ‘twas not my favorite. At the table read I had no idea it was coming. Had no idea what was happening.”
In an episode of Grey’s, Mark Sloan (Eric Dane), suffered a fractured penis after getting intimate with Lexie in the on-call room. When she first read the scene, Leigh recalled “shrinking” in her chair as the script went in front of her face.
“I was blood red,” she shared. “It was mortifying, absolutely mortifying.”
While taking a trip down memory lane from her time on Grey’s, Leigh also recalled having to eat several Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
“Because I was pregnant, we had to explain why Lexie was gaining weight,” Leigh said. “So we all of a sudden made the story line that she nervously ate every time she got stressed.”
Leigh called the scenes “a little rough” before adding that she “understood” why they were included. “But I had to eat 17 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in a scene because it was during the scene,” she said. “I couldn’t spit bucket.”
Lexie was introduced during season 3 of the series as an intern at Seattle Grace, who was hoping to connect with her older half-sister, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo). After five seasons on the show, Lexie died in the season 8 finale after a group from Seattle Grace were involved in a plane crash. Lexie was trapped under the wreckage.
After the episode aired in 2012, later episodes revealed that the surviving doctors watched animals consume Lexie’s dead body. Years later, Leigh exclusively told Us Weekly that she wouldn’t change her character’s outcome.
“That’s a pretty epic way to go,” Leigh told Us in March. “You get crushed under the fuselage of a plane and then apparently eaten by wolves? But then — think about it — then if I was pooped out, what if Lexie turned into a tree? Do you know what I mean? Now I’m forever part of oxygenating the world.”
Leigh gushed that she will “always be incredibly grateful” for Lexie and the story line, especially for her character’s impact on fans.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from people that are going into the medicine field and that are like, ‘I started just like this and I get to watch Lexi’s journey.’” she said. “I appreciate how it affects fans.”