TV Watch

Grey’s Anatomy: Dr. Bailey Was Almost a Blonde?!

11/30/2007 at 12:00 AM EST

Can you imagine anyone other than the wonderful, Emmy-nominated Chandra Wilson playing Grey's Anatomy's tough-as-nails doc Miranda Bailey? Neither can we, though producers, initially at least, had other ideas.

Wilson appeared on The View earlier this week, where she told Barbara Walters–who said Grey's is one of the few shows she regularly watches–and the women that she wasn't exactly what the casting agents were looking for at her first audition for the show. "It was a regular old audition here in New York," Wilson said. "(And) they were looking for a short, white, blonde female … It wasn't going to me."



So how did she woo them over to considering someone less like Kristin Chenoweth and more like Chandra Wilson?

"I knew that (Bailey) was called 'The Nazi,' so I figured that that was gonna have to do with her demeanor somehow, how she treated the interns. So I just walked in with that."

And the rest, of course, is scene-stealing history. –Kimberly Potts

Photo: ABC