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DOCTOR’S ORDERS
He set pulses racing in Grey’s Anatomy, but Bridget Jones’s Baby star Patrick Dempsey reveals he’s about to take on a very different role in a dark new thriller
Patrick Dempsey, aka Dr McDreamy from Grey’s Anatomy, reveals the real reason he left the show – and why next up is a dark TV thriller
There can’t be a woman out there who doesn’t fancy Patrick Dempsey – the square-jawed, lush-haired heartthrob of hit series Grey’s Anatomy. As Dr Derek Shepherd, aka ‘McDreamy’, he stole fans’ hearts for over a decade, only to break them all when he was unceremoniously bumped off in the show three years ago. Even Colin Firth, Patrick’s co- star and on- screen rival in the recent movie Bridget Jones’s Baby, seemed giddy meeting him, declaring, ‘Look at those eyes!’ before rhapsodising about his motor racing career – not content with being McDreamy, Patrick is also a serious racing driver.
‘Oh, we absolutely had a bromance,’ he says of Firth, talking as quickly as he takes hairpin bends. ‘During filming I’d go off and race and come back and tell him about my exploits over the weekend, even though he didn’t quite understand it. He’s lovely. Look at him – he’s Mr Darcy! On set we’d bring out that picture of him coming out of the lake in Pride And Prejudice.’
As luck would have it, shortly after the film was released and while on a flight to LA, Patrick bumped into Hugh Grant, who played the love rival to Colin Firth’s character in the previous two Bridget Jones films but turned down a role in Bridget Jones’s Baby. ‘I thought he’d hate me for standing in for him with my character,’ says Patrick, ‘but he was very nice and complimentary.’
Fans of Patrick now have something else to cheer about, as he’s the star of the new Sky Witness mini-series The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair, which marks Patrick’s return to TV after leaving Grey’s Anatomy. It’s also a determined effort on his part to break free from the shackles of McDreamy, for while his Grey’s persona was charming if a little McDreary at times, his latest character is anything but straightforward.
Based on the bestselling novel by Swiss author Joel Dicker, the show sees Patrick playing Harry Quebert – a college professor and author who years before wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Origin Of Evil, and who now lives in solitude in Maine, on the US East Coast. His former student and now successful author Marcus Goldman (Ben Schnetzer) finds himself saddled with writer’s block and visits Harry to get his creative juices flowing again. Instead, he stumbles upon a nightmare – the body of 15-year-old Nola Kellergan is found buried on Harry’s property, 33 years after her disappearance, with Harry implicated in her murder.
In attempting to clear his mentor’s name, Marcus discovers that Harry and Nola (Kristine Froseth) had a close friendship before she vanished and he soon realises that the other inhabitants of the sleepy seaside town aren’t short of secrets of their own. The investigation into Nola’s murder thus provides Marcus with the inspiration for his new book.
The series, like the novel, is full of twists, flashing backwards and forwards in time from a thirtysomething Harry ( Patrick, at 52, is still yout h f ul look i ng enough to pull it off) to a 67-year-old (‘my hair’s pretty grey already, but it took 45 minutes to highlight what was already there’). It sticks closely to the novel. ‘I was looking for a thriller to work on as I hadn’t done anything like it before,’ Patrick tells me. ‘I wanted to do something edgier, something very different. It’s a study of deeply flawed characters.’
None more so than Harry, whose relationship with Nola – he was 34 and she was 15 when they met – is troubling to say the least. ‘Their connection was not a physical one, but emotional – she was his muse. But even so, I absolutely had doubts about playing the character,’ says Patrick, who himself has a 16year-old daughter, Talula Fyfe. ‘It was very unsettling just to read it and also, we were filming the show last year when everything happened with the #MeToo movement and we were very concerned. We didn’t want to be tone deaf to what was going on in the world and a lot of ideas were thrown around, such as making Nola older. But we stuck with the age from the book – their relationship was never about what people thought it was about.’
The power imbalance between Harry and Nola due to their age difference has curious echoes in Patrick’s own life. When he was 18 and starring in a touring production of the Neil Simon play Brighton Beach Memoirs, he met actress and acting coach Rochelle ‘Rocky’ Parker, then 44, and the two subsequently became involved, mar rying when Patrick was 21 and Parker 48. They divorced in 1994 after seven years ( Rochelle died four years ago) and Patrick later described the union as ‘a Freudian nightmare’.
Did he relate to the relationship between Harry and Nola? ‘I related to the story, but not for that reason,’ he says. ‘Age difference dynamics are always tricky and I think they’re destined not to make it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a younger man or a younger woman – you’re still evolving, still growing, still changing and the other person isn’t as much because they’re older. You’re at two different points in life.’ Does he look back to then and wonder what he was doing? ‘Oh yes,’ he smiles. ‘But there’s not much point in looking back.’
He’s now married to his second wife Jillian Fink, with whom he has three children – twin boys Darby Galen and Sullivan Patrick, 11, and daughter Talula. They recently celebrated their 19th wedding anniversary. ‘We went back to the exact same spot in Maine where we made our vows. It’s hard to believe it’s been 19 years as the time has gone by so quickly. It’s a lot of work – Hollywood is not conducive to that and you have to really make a commitment to work through your difficulties. Everything ebbs and flows and you have to enjoy the good times and work through the bad times.’
One such bad time occurred three years ago when his make-up artist wife filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. But by the following year, they had undergone counselling and were firmly back together. ‘We took a look at our relationship and decided we wanted to get back into it and continue to work on it,’ he says. ‘Which was good because your relationship goes to a different level.’ A better one? ‘I think so. It forces you to look at yourself and what you want and also what your partner wants. You both have to compromise and put the relationship first.’
Part of that involved Patrick cutting back on his racing career to spend more time at home. He also spent time working at the centre he set up in his hometown of Lewiston in Maine to help cancer sufferers after his mother Amanda was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Although she lived much longer than anticipated, she died four years ago aged 79. ‘I still have the opportunity to do everything,’ he says, ‘it’s just much more of a balanced way of approaching life now.’
While 2015 was a turbulent year for the Dempseys, it also coincided with Patrick’s exit from Grey’s Anatomy after his character was killed off in a car crash, leaving behind his pregnant
‘This is a study of deeply flawed characters’
Patrick in Bridget Jones’s Baby with Colin Firth and Renée Zellweger
wife Meredith (played by Ellen Pompeo). Rumour had it he was let go because of his ‘diva’ behaviour on set (although if today is anything to go by, Liza Minnelli has zero competition on that front). Yet he insists, ‘It was my decision to leave. I had a chance to focus on the World Endurance Championship with a team that I knew I could win races with and that was a new challenge. Grey’s was an amazing experience, it was transformative, but 11 years on the show is a long time. We were doing 2 4 epi - so des a season, which is a huge commitment and you don’t have control over your schedule. It’s nice to have the job security [ Patrick was said to be making around £300,000 an episode], but you get to the point where you say, “I’ve done everything I can creatively.” There was no discovery any more in the character. It was time to move on.’ So does he miss it at all? ‘ No, I don’t,’ he says, without hesitation.
But Grey’s fans miss him (‘they say it all the time’), and his heartthrob status shows little sign of abating. Twice he’s been placed second in People magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive polls – once behind Matthew McConaughey, the other behind George Clooney. ‘I’ve met George a few times, he’s very funny,’ he says. ‘He’s certainly the sexiest man in the world... he has good coffee too!’ So how does Patrick’s wife deal with his sex symbol status? ‘She does a much better job than I would if it was reversed,’ he admits. ‘There’s stuff she’s had to put up with that’s shocking, such as being ignored when we’re together or people pushing her out of the way. I’m not sure it’s intentional disrespect, people just get over-excited. But she has a good sense of humour. You can’t take it terribly seriously.’
It’s certainly a far cry from his formative years growing up in Lewiston, when at times he felt like, ‘a misfit, an outsider’. He was diagnosed in his teens with dyslexia. ‘My academic career was never successful. It was very hard to overcome that insecurity about my intellect.’ Having discovered acting through a local professional company, he left home at 17 without graduating from high school after an opportunity arose to travel to New York for work. ‘I came from a small town,’ he says, ‘and if you have that window of opportunity, you have to take it.’ By the late 1980s he was enjoying a period of success playing geeky characters in films such as Can’t Buy Me Love and Meatballs III. He had a few successes thereafter, including 2002 movie Sweet Home Alabama with Reese Witherspoon, but it looked like his star might be waning. He auditioned unsuccessfully for the lead in TV series House (which went to Hugh Laurie) and during the same period also auditioned for a new series entitled Grey’s Anatomy. The rest, as they say, is history.
Since then, he’s combined acting (in movie romcoms such as Enchanted and Made Of Honour) with his love of racing. He came second in his cl a s s a t t he famous Le Mans 24-hour race in 2015. Given that he’s such a petrolhead, would he consider presenting Top Gear when Matt LeBlanc vacates after the next series? ‘I’d never do that. To me, the show is about those three guys,’ he says, referring to Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May who fronted the original show and now appear on Amazon Prime’s The Grand Tour. ‘Matt’s great, but it’s like going into a Broadway show following the original cast – you never get the accolades or attention you’d like.’
One surprising person preferred his racing career to his McDreamy one – Patrick’s mother. ‘She was much more a fan of my racing,’ he says. ‘I wish she could’ve seen me race at Le Mans.’ But while everyone else mourned his absence from Grey’s, his mother wouldn’t have been one of them. ‘She never particularly liked it,’ he grins. ‘It was too bloody for her.’
‘Dyslexia left me insecure about my intellect’