One Grey's Anatomy Special Effect Is Harder To Pull Off Than The Rest

The team behind "Grey's Anatomy" works hard to make sure its doctors look believable, and it often has to get creative when putting together the show's many surgeries and medical emergencies. But fake babies are the toughest to nail.

Newborn infants have been the subject of numerous episodes of the acclaimed medical drama. The need for artificial versions of them arose after neonatal surgeon Dr. Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) made her debut in Season 1, Episode 9, and became a recurring character.

Speaking to Literary Hub in 2021, writer and producer Harry Werksman explained in detail why "Grey's Anatomy" uses synthetic babies for its neonatal surgery sequences. "You can get small children, but sometimes you need them even smaller," he explained. "There was an episode with quintuplets or sextuplets, a whole conveyor belt delivery scene that we did. Those were animatronic, those babies. They had to be small. That took forever to shoot that scene. ... That was a real example of what a ballet it had to be in terms of getting the surgeries right."

The process of constructing lifelike babies for Addison's Season 2 quintuplet delivery scene and other procedures in "Grey's Anatomy" episodes requires precise attention to detail, per special effects artist Tom Burman. In the same oral history interview, Burman revealed that the artificial infants are the most challenging creation to achieve due to their lack of character. "They're kind of a nebulous form and pudgy, and they don't have muscle structure, bone structure, or anything," he said. "Because they're so brand new in this world, they don't have all the flaws and things that allow you to use sometimes as cover or identification."

Burman shared more about a particularly difficult aspect of making the babies: their hair. "You can't use regular human hair because babies have real fine hair," he said. "You have to use animal hair or a type of wool. Angora, so it's real fine. Otherwise, the follicles of hair coming out of the skin in a big close-up look like they were punched in. Each one of those hairs are put in individually and they have to be really fine and wispy."

Some fans of "Grey's Anatomy" believe that these fake babies are "creepy," as one Reddit poster claims. Nonetheless, the series' smallest characters require tons of work behind the scenes.