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Dr. Bailey's 11 Best 'Grey's Anatomy' One-Liners Will Have You In Stitches
Maybe laughter really is the best medicine. As evidenced by Dr. Miranda Bailey's best Grey's Anatomy one-liners, a tell-it-like-it-is surgeon's no-nonsense personality can be the perfect way to cut right through all the heart-wrenching drama of a hospital emergency room. And actor Chandra Wilson, who began portraying Grey Sloan Memorial's beloved current Chief of Surgery when the hit ABC series premiered in March 2005, has been just what the doctor ordered to achieve that effect. Wilson admits, however, that she's come a long way from her first day on the Grey's set.
"There was no thought in my mind, standing there in that moment, that I would still be playing that same character 11 years later," Wilson, who took a leave of absence from her day job at Deustsch Bank to film the Grey's pilot, told Cosmopolitan in late 2015. "All I was thinking was, 'Oooh, I'm doing a job as an actor, and I'm getting paid, and I'm going to be able to pay my bills and pay my credit card.'"
Now, nearly 14 years later — and with multiple Emmy nominations under her belt — Wilson (and Bailey) have both since earned their rightful places in the pop culture canon. “It’s the biggest compliment to us to hear kids say ... ‘My mom watched and now she watches me watching,'” Wilson told ABC News while celebrating the Grey's 300th episode in 2017.
Though fans dread the thought, Wilson will one day hang up her scrubs. And, sure, when that time comes, she'll leave a legacy of inspiring many young fans to pursue careers in medicine. But, for most, she'll be immortalized by a wit just as sharp as her scalpel. Here are just a few of Bailey's best Grey's quotes.
1"Rule number one: Don’t bother sucking up. I already hate you, that’s not gonna change.”
Wilson told Cosmo she still finds herself revisiting the very first Grey's episode where, as 'the Nazi' intern supervisor, she firmly establishes Bailey's five rules. "If I feel like I'm thinking too hard about something, I go back to that pilot because I know that that's who she thinks she is," Wilson told Cosmo. "She thinks she's that woman, regardless of the fact that we know better now, we've seen her at her best and her worst and her most vulnerable. That's still who she thinks she is."
2"I'm going to stop listening to you because the words you are saying are hurting me."
Of course not everyone has heeded her advice over the years, and, every now and then, Bailey has to lay down the law, as she did in this Season 6 scene.
3"You don't get to talk anymore. You don't get to talk ever again."
In another episode the same year, she even had to jokingly bar Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) from speaking — "ever again," as she put it — when Mer gets hung up on a (Bailey-debunked) idea that a comatose patient was tracing a secret message on her hand.
4"O'Malley, stop looking at my vajayjay."
During a Season 2 scene where Bailey is giving birth, she had one of her most iconic moments, hilariously coining the term vajayjay while telling George (T.R. Knight) where not to fix his eyes. "'Vajayjay' in the table read was a time stopper, because we laughed for I don't know how long," she also recalled to Cosmo. "This was one of those times where we hadn't gotten the script ahead of time, so there hadn't been any time to comment on it."
5"Stop, right there. I don't need to know this."
With doctors nicknamed "McDreamy" (Patrick Dempsey) and "McSteamy" (Eric Dane) roaming the halls (back then, anyway), Bailey has frequently had to shut down the staff's raging hormones. In Season 3, she succinctly thwarted an attempt by Callie (Sara Ramirez) to give some TMI details of her sex life with George.
6“Which one of you left your damn drawers on my surgical floor?”
Try as she might, however, poor Bailey still sometimes gets pulled into the fray. Her Season 3 attempts to track down which intern's panties (misplaced during a secret hospital tryst) are pinned to the bulletin board played to much hilarity. "It's always one of mine, always" she laments in the scene.
7"This man is a whore, has always been a whore and will always probably be a whore."
When it comes down to it, though, she calls it like she sees it — even labeling Dr. Mark "McSteamy" Sloan with on choice word in a Season 4 episode. "That was just pure silliness," Wilson shared with Cosmo.
8“I’m short, so my punches land low.”
As Bailey noted in Season 9, after all, she's feisty and not one to be messed with. (In real life, Wilson is about five-feet-tall, FYI.)
9"It's IDRIS ELBA."
Leave it to Bailey to comically temper the expectations of onscreen hubby, Dr. Ben Warren (Jason Winston George), should People's 2018 Sexiest Man Alive ever come to Seattle while the Station 19 character lie in a coma: "He could ... witness an accident, save a child's life, carry that child in his arms — bare-chested — into my trauma room. You don't know."
10"His daughter’s hair is 31 flavors of wrong. It's hard on the eyes."
"Look, you are white, but your baby is Black. Do your baby's hair!" she hilariously begs a perfectly coifed Derek Shepherd, who mistakes a woman's sideways glances at him carrying his adopted daughter as racism.
11“I’m busy holding myself together with tape and glue."
At the end of the day, though, Bailey has chinks in her armor, and, just like everyone else, sometimes she's just barely keeping it all together — "by tape and glue," as she admitted during Season 7. Bailey's softer side only adds to how endearing she remains for fans, who find themselves saying, "same."
Whether showing those cracks or simply cracking fans up, she has proven, season after season, why Grey Sloan Memorial is the house that Bailey built.
