Grey’s Anatomy, like any free-to-air series with declining audiences and a large wage bill, is in the middle of a session of budget cuts. The cost of the cast must be reduced and, so far, this strategy has claimed a victim: Jake Borelli has been fired after seven seasons as Levi Schmitt.
Jake Borelli, in recent seasons, had been a fundamental piece. Her character was introduced when new residents entered season 14 and, after falling in love with Dr. Nico Kim (Alex Landi), she came out of the closet: thus the medical drama resolved the pending issue of having a love story between two men in the hallways of the Gray Sloan Memorial Hospital. Borelli, in turn, took the opportunity to come out publicly.
While it is strange to consider Borelli one of the veterans of Grey’s Anatomy as he has not participated in even a third of the episodes, he should be considered as such: he has been present in seven seasons, five of them as a regular (or that is, fixed), and in total he has appeared in 123 episodes of the series. There are television actors who in their entire career do not reach this volume of deliveries in a single production.
The departure, for the record, will not be abrupt: it is expected that he will appear in some episodes of season 21 to be able to say goodbye to Dr. Schmitt properly, who in these last episodes has been focused on training and controlling the new residents played by Niko Terho , Adelaide Kane, Midori Francis, Harry Shum Jr and Alexis Floyd.
This change will also not be the only one for next season, as reported by Deadline. It is unknown if there may be more layoffs of actors to balance the budgets, but some of the veterans on the payroll will see their presence cut.
ABC Signature, the production company of the Disney-owned ABC channel, is in negotiations and, instead of asking the main actors for a salary reduction, is trying to reach agreements to leave their payroll intact but with a smaller number of guaranteed episodes. This means that the writers’ room headed by Meg Marinis will have to do a tight job: manage the episodic plots taking into account that the actors will have to be dispensed with in certain episodes to save costs.
Grey’s Anatomy finds itself in a particular position. On the one hand, live audiences in the United States, which are around 4 million, force the budget to be cut, especially for a large and long-standing cast. On the other, no one at Disney wants to cancel the medical drama starring Ellen Pompeo (now on and off) because they are aware of its appeal in the Disney catalog.
