Grey's Anatomy Might Be Testing The Waters For A Private Practice Revival

When Grey’s Anatomy airs Season 19’s fifth episode on Nov. 3, Kate Walsh’s Addison Montgomery will have already appeared in two of them. That, of course, follows on the heels of a handful of guest spots last season, too, leading some to believe that Addison could be returning to Grey Sloan Memorial full-time. Another possibility? The network could be taking the temperature on a possible Private Practice revival. After all, who knows better how to save a life?

Grey’s creator Shonda Rhimes, for one, would be on board. Appearing on Good Morning America’s Oct. 25 episode, she chose Private Practice as the Shondaland show she’d most like to bring back to TV. “We had so many more stories we could tell,” Rhimes said of the Walsh-led spinoff that aired on ABC from 2007-2013. “I just felt like we had so much more to say with those characters and so much further to go, and that also felt like a show that had endless possibility.”

Her producing partner, Betsy Beers, agreed, noting on GMA how viewers got to grow with the characters, including Addison and Caterina Scorsone’s Amelia Shepherd. The Private Practice cast also included Tim Daly (Pete Wilder), Audra McDonald (Naomi Bennett), Paul Adelstein (Cooper Freedman), KaDee Strickland (Charlotte King), Chris Lowell (William “Dell” Parker), Taye Diggs (Sam Bennett), and Amy Brenneman (Violet Turner). “There's many, many more possibilities to come with them,” Beers added.

Another clue? The Nov. 3 Grey’s episode will also feature a mini Private Practice reunion of sorts. In “When I Get to the Border,” Bailey (Chandra Wilson) and Addison “take a road trip to volunteer at a family planning center, but a patient’s ectopic pregnancy leads to complications,” per ABC’s description. Preview images show the duo with another doctor, played by actor Laura Niemi, who guested as a patient’s mother named Betty Crawford in Private Practice Season 3.

When PureWow asked Walsh as recently as July about potentially returning to Private Practice, she teased that “anything is possible,” adding, “We’ve always — amongst the cast, at least — talked about that, but Shonda hasn’t really delved into that, so I don’t know.” So, at least for now, Addison will just be a recurring character on Grey’s.

Other alums making a comeback in Episode 5 are Jesse Williams as Jackson Avery and Greg Germann as Tom Koracick, and, yes, there’s spin-off talk there, too. Both Williams and Sarah Drew, who plays April Kepner, have publicly expressed interest in a “Japril” spin-off that might chronicle the reunited couple’s life in Boston, should the actors’ schedules eventually allow for the possibility.

“That would entail an entire rekindling of a romance that has to go and a partnership that has to go beyond the honeymoon phase,” Williams recently explained to E! News. “They’re grown now. They got a growing kid, and they have careers, and they’d be in a new city. Boston’s a tricky place. There’d be plenty of entry points for those characters and others from the show.”

The ball’s in your court, ABC.