'Grey's Anatomy' Season 17 to Start Filming in September

Grey's Anatomy is officially set to resume filming this fall. According to Variety, Season 17 of Grey's Anatomy will begin filming in September. The first two episodes of the season could begin production as early as next week in Los Angeles. Several other ABC shows, as The Goldbergs, A Million Little Things, The Good Doctor and Big Sky, have already received the green light to resume production.

While Grey's Anatomy will resume production soon, it's unclear exactly when the new season will premiere. ABC recently announced its fall schedule, which largely features unscripted programming such as Dancing With the Stars and The Bachelorette. That schedule did not include Grey's Anatomy, which typically airs on Thursday nights on the network. Grey's Anatomy, like many other television programs, halted production in March amidst the coronavirus pandemic. This factor caused Season 16 of the series to be cut short by four episodes. The series had just wrapped production on the 21st episode of the season, which aired in April and served as the de-facto season finale when production shut down.

At the time, showrunner Krista Vernoff, along with executive producers Debbie Allen and James Williams, issued a memo to the cast and crew in which they revealed that production on the series would be halted to keep everyone's safety in mind. "Out of an abundance of caution, production is postponed on Grey's Anatomy effective immediately," the memo read. "We are going home now for at least two weeks and waiting to see how the coronavirus situation evolves. This decision was made to ensure the health and safety of the whole cast and crew and the safety of our loved ones outside of work, and it was made in accordance with Mayor Garcetti's suggestion that we not gather in groups of more than 50."

As for whether Grey's Anatomy will address the coronavirus pandemic in its upcoming season, Vernoff confirmed that to be the case during a recent TV Academy panel. "There's no way to be a long-running medical show and not do the medical story of our lifetimes," she said. "I feel like our show has an opportunity and a responsibility to tell some of those stories." The ABC series brings in real-life doctors to talk about their experiences before each season. Vernoff explained that the stories that the doctors shared this time around were unlike any of those from previous years. She also explained that their experiences would be translated into the character of Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd). She added, "(The doctors) are literally shaking and trying not to cry, they're pale, and they're talking about it as war — a war that they were not trained for. And that's been one of our big conversations about Owen, is that he's actually trained for this in a way that most of the other doctors aren't."