‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Star Jake Borelli on Levi Schmitt’s Exit and Almost Refusing His Coming Out Storyline: ‘I Wasn’t Ready to Talk About’ It on a ‘Global Level’

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for “If You Leave,” the Nov. 14 episode of ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”

After eight seasons and more than 130 episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Dr. Levi Schmitt (Jake Borelli) has wrapped up his residency at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.

In Thursday’s episode of the venerable ABC medical drama, the affable doctor officially bids farewell to his colleagues in Seattle to take a lucrative medical research position in San Antonio, Texas, where he intends to gain some much-needed experience before applying for competitive pediatric surgery fellowships. But not wanting to sacrifice his personal life in pursuit of his professional ambitions, Schmitt asks his boyfriend, new hospital chaplain James (Michael Thomas Grant), to move across the country with him, declaring that he has fallen madly in love with him. By the end of the hour, James, who assures Schmitt the feeling is mutual, quits his job, and the two lovers walk off into the sunset together.

“Levi’s coming right up to the end of his residency, so I think a decision needed to be made at some point about whether he actually moves into an attending [position] at Grey Sloan or if he has more to learn,” Borelli tells Variety. “I don’t know much about the inner workings behind the scenes and what people had to shuffle around to make everything work. But once that idea was pitched to me, Meg [Marinis], the showrunner, and I then started talking about, ‘What would be the things that we want to see Levi accomplish before he leaves Grey Sloan? How did Levi grow? What is the larger overarching story of Levi?’ And then we got to craft this really beautiful, very queer, very empowering ending for this character that we’ve all loved so much.”

It’s a fitting sendoff for Borelli, who joined the show as a co-star in Season 14 before being promoted to series regular a couple seasons later. Schmitt was initially known to audiences as “Glasses,” a klutzy, squeamish sub-intern whose spectacles accidentally dropped into a patient’s abdominal cavity during surgery. But during his second season on “Grey’s,” Schmitt’s questioning of his own sexuality eventually resulted in his coming-out as the first gay male series regular character in the show’s history.

“This role played by me as a queer man is massive, because there’s not many queer characters that are played by and championed by queer people. That’s a legacy that I’m super, super proud of and that I yearn to see more of. I was a fan of this show for so long, and there was massive queer representation with ‘Calzona,’” Borelli says, referring to the fan-favorite relationship between Sara Ramírez’s Callie Torres and Jessica Capshaw’s Arizona Robbins. “It was wonderful to see as a fan, but it never really hit my experience as a queer man. They’re vastly different. So when [former showrunner] Krista [Vernoff] really championed this storyline and put her blood, sweat and tears into this and allowed me to do the same, that was groundbreaking, and I’m so glad so many people saw it.”

Schmitt may have left the building, but Borelli admits he will still be lurking in the halls of TV’s most famous fake hospital for the time being. He is still shadowing producing director Debbie Allen, with the goal of one day returning to helm an episode of “Grey’s.” In this exit interview, Borelli opens up about the life-changing experience of playing Schmitt, why he is particularly proud of his character’s evolution — and how he sees the current landscape for queer actors amidst an increasingly divisive and challenging sociopolitical climate.

How much input did you have in the crafting of Levi’s exit?

Oh, quite a bit. The writers, especially with me as a queer actor playing a queer character, have been very generous with their time, trying to make this character authentic. So, from the get-go with Krista, I had an invitation to come into the writers’ room and express the dreams that I would have as a queer person, in terms of what I would want to say through this character.

Even all the way up to the end, I was in Meg’s office with her, typing on the computer with her, trying to figure out, “What is the best way to end this? What are the conversations he should be having with Jo? What is important in this gay relationship? How does this relationship differ from [Levi’s first love] Nico?” We really focused on them having a very good, easy communication style, which led to them navigating this big choice of whether or not they should move across the country together. So there was a lot of input, and I’m really grateful for that.

How would you say Levi has evolved in the eight seasons that you’ve played him, and where do you think we leave him by the end of his final episode?

I feel like Levi has taken a complete 180 in his confidence. He’s always been vulnerable, but we’ve gotten to see over these eight seasons how being vulnerable really leads to success and to strong relationships and a moral compass that’s pointed him forward. I love that we’ve gotten to see how the further he steps into his queerness, the more power he actually has in his own life.

We watched him move from this bumbly, fumbly “Glasses” into Chief Resident, into possibly getting an attending job at Grey Sloan, and then into having the courage to say, “You know what? Sometimes you gotta move out of your whole house and you gotta do something different, and you gotta take a step sideways in order to go forward.” So now I’m just excited to see, possibly in the future, if he ever comes back, just what these very courageous decisions led to in his life.

Levi took a long time to declare his specialty — and he even took a brief detour into becoming an OB/GYN — but he feels like he was always destined to end up in pediatric surgery. Why do you feel like that was ultimately the right specialty for him? How did you make sense of his reasoning?

I do think that OB was never going to happen. He didn’t really have any other option, and we saw that the second the intern program went back up again, he jumped ship and went straight back to his surgical residency. So I think he always wanted to be a surgeon.

I think just coming to terms with the fact that he does have an innate way to connect with young people and an ability to see them as who they are, as a result of his own vulnerability — that was the catalyst for him wanting to go into PEDS. It was certainly the catalyst for Richard Webber [James Pickens Jr.] to see that in him and to give him that advice. And then just from a story standpoint, I think it’s so incredibly powerful to see a gay PEDS surgeon, to show that queer people are just as successful with teaching and shepherding our new generation forward. I think that’s a beautiful thing to see, so I do hope, down the road, “Grey’s” decides to tell that story a little more in-depth. 

In his final scene, Levi looks up at the Grey Sloan sign, and all of his memories suddenly come rushing back to him. It’s really a montage of your character’s greatest hits —

I haven’t even seen it yet! I don’t even know what it is. In the script, it’s just like, “LEVI’S MONTAGE.” So I get to tune in and I get to see it, and I’m very, very excited.

Looking back at Levi’s arc, what are you personally most proud of having accomplished? Is there a particular storyline that will stay with you?

Levi has had this connection to blood throughout the series that I think is so beautiful, and it has grown with him. It started with him being terrified of blood. It caused him to faint. He didn’t like the sight of it. It was counterintuitive to his desire to be a surgeon. And then he becomes [known as] “Blood Bank.” He gets a new nickname because he saves Judy Kemp [in Season 14], and then he is very instrumental in finding the golden blood for the kid [in Season 15] who has only seven people in the world who can donate blood to him. And then that jumps forward to, even though Levi is a universal blood donor, after he’s out of the closet, he can’t donate blood anymore because he’s a gay man, which is a very archaic and bigoted remnant of the past in the medical community. So fighting for that, getting to talk about HIV on a show this massive that is seen all over the world, getting to talk about PrEP was incredible. This throughline of blood for Levi, I think, is beautiful in hindsight and very cool. 

You’ve spoken in the past about how you felt like your own life often paralleled Levi’s in some way, in large part because you share a lot of the same characteristics. What have you learned about yourself through the process of playing him?

I was thrust into a vulnerability that I don’t know I would’ve chosen on my own, in terms of coming out on a global level. That’s not something that many people are afforded the opportunity to do. It’s scary, and it is vulnerable, but it has given me a much bigger life than I ever would’ve dreamed of. I’ve been able to talk to so many more people than I ever would’ve been able to before. I’ve been able to really step into the queer community and be able to tell some of these stories that often go untold. So as I move forward in my career and as I move away from Levi, or possibly come back to visit Levi, that will remain true for me; it’s finding ways to tell these well-rounded queer stories. 

You’d been out in your personal life for almost a decade, but you chose to come out publicly around this time six years ago, when your character was undergoing his own sexual awakening on “Grey’s.” In retrospect, did you feel any trepidation about coming out publicly? How do you reflect on that decision now?

Yeah, I had so much trepidation. I almost said no to Krista when she said that her plan was to have Levi come out. This was after a year of being on the show and playing him not queer, for all I knew. I almost said no, because I knew he would be the first major gay male character in the show, and that would be massive for the show. I would then be forced to talk about something that, at that point in my life, I wasn’t ready to talk about on the global level, which you can never be prepared for. But I did have all these fears that as an out gay person, you couldn’t be successful.

Look, we’re in a time right now where it is even scarier, and being thrust out into the world as a queer person, especially in this time, is terrifying. But I wouldn’t have changed it for the world. The amount of joy that came from deciding to tell this story in an honest and authentic way is unparalleled, and my life has changed so much for the better after being authentic and vulnerable with myself and, in turn, vulnerable with other people. 

Before Levi leaves for Texas, Jo (Camilla Luddington) asks him to be her and Link’s (Chris Carmack) twins’ godfather — an offer he happily accepts. It’s funny to think about how their relationship has evolved over the years; back in Season 14, Jo felt so ashamed of her one-night stand with Levi, and now they’re having life-changing conversations with each other. What was it like for you to shoot that final scene with Camilla?

I should add that it didn’t just start with Jo. This character wouldn’t have existed without Camilla Luddington, because she originally pitched this storyline of Jo sleeping with a new intern to Krista, and that it would be this dorky guy that she ends up being embarrassed about. That’s why the character of Levi existed, and then it turned into this crazy thing. So I definitely owe a lot to Camilla Luddington.

Over the years, she and I have crafted one of my favorite friendships on the show ever — seeing these two very different characters bickering like siblings and seeing how much they love each other and how much they’ve changed each other. So, that final scene was certainly tough for us. At the table read, there was not a dry eye in the room, and it paralleled what we were going through because we’ve become so close over the last eight years, and our goodbye as characters was very close to our goodbye as coworkers and as work friends. So, yeah, we didn’t really have to act much. We just breathed, and whatever came out … came out. 

Did you get to keep any props to commemorate your time on “Grey’s”?

I have a whole box of stuff! Debbie Allen came through. She was stealing shit. I don’t even know how she got some of the stuff she got, but I have a box of stuff. I have my lab coat and my red stethoscope, and Nicole, one of our set designers, printed out this beautiful blueprint of Levi’s basement with the staircase that his mom fell down, so I have that and I’m going to hang it up in my house.

Going back to when you first landed this part in 2017, how long did you think this role would last? And how would you compare your first and last days on set?

I was told it was one episode. I don’t know if you know much about the levels on TV — series regulars are the big dogs, then it’s guest stars, and then it’s co-stars. Oftentimes, co-stars have one line. So this was a co-star role for one episode, with a possible appearance in a second episode, and it ended up being those two episodes. It was a wonderful experience. It was the glasses falling in the body cavity, it was sleeping with Jo, wreaking havoc on the hospital, and then he left. I went back to New York where I was living, and that was it. I made a couple thousand dollars and I was like, “I can pay rent this month! This is great!” And then it turned into eight years of life-changing television for me. So, yeah, no one knew what it was going to turn into.

In terms of the first day to the last day, I have grown so much with these people. They truly are my family. I was so nervous in the beginning. I was so terrified of everyone. I was terrified of Ellen Pompeo, Debbie Allen and Jesse Williams, and I was so nervous to be acting next to them. By the end, Debbie and I walked out arm-in-arm to my clap-out after my last scene, and we got to share this moment with the whole cast. Everyone showed up, and it was not stressful at all — very comfortable, very loving.

And to be honest, I haven’t even left yet because I still shadow Debbie Allen, our directing producer, and I’m shadowing Alison Liddi Brown right now on set. I’m going to go there after this interview, so hopefully, one day I’ll be able to direct and still haunt them from behind the camera. 

You’ve mentioned multiple times about how you hope to revisit Levi’s story at some point, and now you’re talking about returning to direct one day. Does that mean the door is open for you to return to “Grey’s” sooner rather than later?

It’s super open, honestly. I’ve been shadowing for a while now, learning so much, and we see on “Grey’s” that oftentimes the best directors are the [actors] that have lived it too. Kevin McKidd directs a ton, Jesse Williams, Chandra Wilson — we know this world so strongly, and Meg, Debbie and I have certainly talked about it. Also, there’s this wonderful opportunity now that Levi’s in Texas to see in the future what that move really did for him, how that move really changed him. So I’m very hopeful that, in the future, we’ll see some more of Levi and see how these big, courageous choices have really affected him.

Beyond “Grey’s,” what’s next for you?

Directing is a next huge step for me. There are several projects that I’m working on that I’m very excited to tell, but from a directing standpoint. I’ll be getting to tell queer stories that I necessarily wouldn’t be able to tell from my own body — you know what I mean? — but that I still get to tell through the art form.

As you look ahead to returning to auditioning for more parts, how do you feel like the landscape for queer actors has changed since 2017? And what do you think is the next step in this evolving conversation about diversity and inclusion when it comes to queer stories?

I think there’s certainly more content around queer people. There’s certainly more well-rounded queer characters out in the mainstream media. I think there’s a little bit of a rollback as well; we’re seeing a lot of queer characters [leaving], storylines ending, or full TV shows that have very big queer casts ending. I hope that that’s just the natural turnover of stories, and I hope that executives, tastemakers and creatives really remember how lucrative these stories have been and how much they have affected our world and our lives. I think one of the big things that I’ve seen that has really supported that [shift] is a growing queerness in the creative realm, in terms of people behind the camera, directors, writers, producers, because when your environment reflects the storyline that you’re telling, it’s already more authentic. So I think those are steps that we can also continue to take.

This interview has been edited and condensed.