On making the announcement to leave early on
“It’s really difficult to write television when you don’t know an endpoint,” she tells EW, explaining why she thought it was important to give the show’s writers time to plan for her departure. “For the writers…to know there are multiple episodes to write a story — to write a conclusion — is a great gift. It’s also a great gift to be able to play because I usually don’t know what’s going to happen to the character. For me, it can just infuse her with a richness that you can’t necessarily have not knowing that information.”
On Cristina and Owen
“They don’t want to be in the same place they have been. Where they are going, I just don’t know. It sort of breaks my heart to not be in the arms of Kevin McKidd now. But who knows? It’s a long season.”
On Cristina Yang, the modern woman
“I feel like Cristina — who does not represent a classic or traditional female character that we see on television — is really essential to the movement of where we are as women. A woman isn’t only defined by her career and a woman is not only defined by her role as a mother and a wife either,” she says. “It’s to try to see the person and the character as a whole individual. And I do like the differences between Cristina and Meredith because you get to see multiple facets of the choices that women can make.”
On how Cristina should go at the end
“I don’t know what they have planned. It can be anything,” she says. “She could, like — I mean, I don’t want them to off me. I know people have died on this show. They could send her to the moon. I have no idea.”
Full interview at EW
