For 21 seasons, doctors and interns have been saving lives, falling in love, and navigating tragedy on the Grey’s Anatomy sets. A character in its own right, Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, where it all takes place, would probably “cover 10 city blocks” in real life, Grey’s Anatomy production designer John Zachary tells AD. “We have multiple ICUs, We have so many patient rooms, we have multiple conference rooms, we have clinics. There’s just so much.”
Set in Seattle and filmed at Prospect Studios in Los Feliz, California, the world of Grey’s spans six soundstages. Step inside and you’ll find the hospital interiors, Joe’s Bar, and the intern house interior and backyard. The walls and set dressings of the hospital can be changed in order to transform the spaces into special rooms like lockers, offices, and skills labs.
When it comes to Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital’s exteriors, the crew has been using West LA College for the past three seasons. They also dress up a few exteriors around the studio for scenes that involve the actors approaching or leaving the building.
“It’s a fine line that we walk in all these sets because it’s a serious hospital and there are these romantic, sometimes funny relationships that are the heart of the stories,” Zachary shares. “So we’re constantly battling with how to present an environment that covers both of those areas.”
In celebration of the show’s 20th anniversary this year, AD dug into how Grey’s Anatomy sets have been brought to life over the course of two decades and counting.
Harborview Medical Center served as inspiration for the original hospital set
Ellen Pompeo on-location in Seattle’s Kerry Park while shooting a season two episode called “Let It Be.” The cast and production team will sometimes head to Seattle to film scenes for several episodes at the same time. Photo: Craig Sjodin/Getty Images
During pre-production for the pilot, which aired in 2005, Laurence Bennett, Grey’s Anatomy’s first production designer, and Peter Horton, the show’s pilot director, went on a location scouting trip to Seattle. They found themselves taken by Harborview Medical Center, a light brick campus featuring a glass-sheathed exterior and helicopter pads, located in the historic neighborhood of First Hill.
Horton tells AD that the location became a “touchstone” for their fictional hospital. “It was this [building] sitting up on the hill overlooking the sound, it just had a spirit to it,” he recalls. “Harborview has a fairly renovated, new feeling to it, it’s a beautiful space for a hospital.”
The breadth of the building offered further inspiration for the production designer and director. “So much of a hospital show is long speeches as you’re walking through hallways and making turns and going into rooms that turn into other rooms,” Horton says. “We had this sense of needing space and size. It couldn’t feel small and claustrophobic like so many hospitals do.”
Bennett’s design featured a series of hallways, which all led to the primary nurse station, along with interior balconies, built on the soundstage, to make the space seem expansive and add more movement to scenes.
Plenty of practical research went into building the hospital sets
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A still from the season 19 premiere shows residents hanging out on gurneys in a hallway. Photo: Liliane Lathan/Getty Images
Horton and Bennett got an in-depth tour of the UCLA medical facility ahead of shooting the pilot, making note of the space’s various nooks and crannies.
“We paid special attention to the backstage areas in medical care, and one thing we noticed was just extensive amounts of equipment in storage waiting for repair or calibration,” Bennett says. “There would be hallways with lines and lines of stuff waiting to be taken off to get fixed, which was sort of the inspiration for the hallway where the interns would take their long breaks.”
The hospital’s real-life exteriors were originally filmed at Sepulveda VA Medical Center
The production team set about finding filming locations that would help set the tone for the pilot and struck gold with Sepulveda VA Medical Center in North Hills, CA. The space would serve as the exterior location for their fictional hospital, along with the interior location for the iconic airbridge. “I took a look at that view with the bridge and the window, and I could have sworn I could see Bellevue across the sound,” Horton says. “It’s Los Angeles, but for some reason you look out and there’s this hill of trees.”
When he explored the underbelly of the hospital, the director discovered catacombs, which felt like the perfect spot for the interns to retreat amid chaotic shifts. The crew filmed on-location in those tunnels for the pilot episode, adding set dressing to make it feel like a warmer, more pleasant place to gather.
“There were these kind of weird basement halls that were not fun and not inviting, and [we wanted to] make them inviting because this is their safe space,” he recalls. “So you put gurneys down there and you put rejected abandoned hospital equipment—they could take this little safe basement space and turn it into their place to gather.”
Glass is used all over the sets to add depth
When Bennett was designing the Grey’s hospital, he used an extensive amount of glass throughout, which was gimbaled to avoid reflections. “[The glass] was really to ensure there was some depth and give relief from the closed room syndrome,” the production designer explains.
Bennett also designed an observation gallery for the pilot, which would allow the interns to watch procedures from behind a glass wall. “[Grey’s Anatomy creator] Shonda Rhimes had written all these great scenes in the operating room with the observation gallery, and that’s something that doesn’t really exist in contemporary hospitals. We actually built that at the gym in the VA.” When the show went to series, this was integrated into the set at Prospect Studios.
The intern house was designed to have a college-like feel
When Horton envisioned the intern house—which would go on to become the home base for so many Grey’s characters—he likened it to grand homes in college towns. “You go to college towns that have a legacy of wealth but are no longer wealthy, and you have these beautiful old craftsman houses that were one day in their prime but have five college kids living in them,” he explains. “It’s being used and abused by people who have very little money and they’re trying to get started and trying to make it a home.”
John Zachary, who began working as the show’s production designer in season 19, tells AD that the intern house has remained relatively unchanged over the years, save for additions made to the upstairs bedrooms when new interns move in.
“If [the characters] have a little bit of flair, we’ll brighten up the color a little bit,” he says. “We’ll think, ‘What are this person’s hobbies? Do they ski? Do they have a surfboard in the corner?’ Unless you do that when you’re dressing a set, it just becomes a model home.”
Much like real-life hospitals, Seattle Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital continues to change with time
Over the course of 21 seasons, the hospital has gotten its share of touch-ups. “Originally, the hospital was green, but it became dated looking and so they made a decision to paint it,” Zachary recalls. Zachary gave the hospital’s elevators—which have been the setting for deliveries, surgeries and multiple milestone life moments—a remodel, while maintaining the integrity of the set. “There was a marriage proposal that happened in the elevator, so much stuff happened in there, so I wanted to keep the feel of the original. We just changed the surfaces and updated it with some contemporary style and lighting,” he explains.
There are tricks to making a hospital setting feel more romantic
Hospitals may not be the most romantic settings in real life, but the Grey’s production team has a knack for convincing audiences otherwise. “We’re always looking for a private place for somebody to have an intimate conversation, and it’s hard in a hospital,” Zachary says.
Because hospitals are notoriously brightly lit, Zachary will turn to smaller, closed-in portions of the set—a supply closet, a staircase—for characters to steal away. The crew adds mood lighting to help set the scene’s tone. “We have a couple of areas where it’s kind of pretty and romantic and they can walk outside,” the production designer notes. “There’s a park up the street from the hospital where they can go sit on a bench.”
One of the modular sets. Photo: Michael Ansell/Getty Images
“Everything is pretty modular, most of it comes apart,” Zachary notes. “There are exceptions—we have two operating rooms that never come apart. One of them has a second story which has a gallery that’s connected to a staircase.”
A lot of sets, he adds, are used for multiple locations. Bailey’s clinic is a modular set, and the production team will pull the walls out to transform the space into the lecture hall, Richard’s office, or the attending lounge.
The production designer goes an extra mile for Meredith Grey
Take a closer look at the background when Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) makes an appearance on Grey’s. Zachary likes to add extra design touches to the walls anytime the actor, who no longer appears as a series regular, returns.
“Even in hotel rooms and conference rooms and so forth, I’ll add a wall texture…every time there’s a new set where she’s involved, I’ll try to come up with some kind of cool wallpaper,” he explains. “There’s a hotel room that we [built] at the end of the last season, we did a mural on the wall.”
It’s a respectful salute to Pompeo, who has been a pivotal figure in the world since the show debuted in 2005. “I kind of step it up for her,” Zachary says.
