Grey's Anatomy Worked Hard To Make Sure Its Doctors Looked Real, 'Rough And Ready'

The cast and crew of "Grey's Anatomy" have worked overtime to make sure the doctors inside their world seem real. Back in 2005, when Shonda Rhimes had the idea for the long-running medical drama, she wanted things to look a little different than what audiences may have come to expect from hospital stories on broadcast TV.

As costume designer Mimi Melgaard told Entertainment Weekly, "I wanted the character and the story to come out. I don't want someone to go, like, 'What coat is that?' Or, 'Ooh, that's a cool bag.' We never wanted that, so we kind of developed this Seattle look, which was a muted color palette. Also, when the show started, my intention was to have the clothes really subtle. I kept thinking that the show was going to go into syndication, so I wanted the clothes to look timeless."

The result was that when the show first started, the doctors at Seattle Grace Hospital looked like they had been through the wringer, with "Grey's Anatomy" pilot director Peter Horton even suggesting that the cast wear no makeup. Makeup director Normal Leavitt explained, "Peter Horton wanted everybody to look, like, rough and ready, to try to keep them looking real. They're medical people just taking care of stuff, without makeup. I don't think Shonda or [her producing partner] Betsy Beers particularly liked that."

All this talk of realism sounds good until it hits the screen: Shonda Rhimes lobbied for the costume team to use real scrubs for the "Grey's Anatomy" actors, but there were going to be some alterations necessary. "At the very beginning, Shonda wanted the scrubs to look real, but real scrubs are totally ill-fitting. They're huge," Mimi Melgaard admitted. "We didn't want to make them look like they zipped up the back, but we tried to make them as flattering as possible within the reality of the show."

Keeping the background elements humming while putting the focus on the story became a big driver for the costume and makeup teams. "The story was first, and the clothes couldn't distract from the story at all," Melgaard continued. "I worked really hard to never have the clothes upstage anything. Even in surgery, you see the bottom of the scrub cap and their eyes. I didn't want anything to distract them from their eyes, even in those real tight close-ups."

Just as there were modifications made to the costumes, the makeup went through some compromises as well. "Grey's Anatomy" began with things a little more minimal, eventually building to a bit more of the maximalism that we've all grown accustomed to over the years. "They were young, pretty people anyway, what are you going to do? My whole thing was to do no harm," Normal Leavitt explained. "As the episodes went along, I don't know, the network, Shonda, Betsy, whoever else was in there, wanted a little more glamour. It's a TV show." Judging by the response, 22 seasons later, Rhimes and her team made the right call.