Kevin McKidd donned the scrubs of Dr. Owen Hunt in 2008. In lieu of an icebreaker, Dr. Hunt introduced himself to Grey’s Anatomy by performing an emergency tracheotomy — with a pen. “When I met Shonda [Rhimes] about the role, she said there wasn’t even a character,” McKidd recalls. “She hadn’t even written the script.” Rhimes’ spontaneity proved a superpower. Eighteen action-packed years would pass before McKidd set down the scalpel and said goodbye to Grey’s Anatomy.
Yet the actor isn’t one to idle.
“That night, when we wrapped [Grey’s Anatomy], everybody did the big clap out — the hugs and the tears and the speeches — I got in the car, drove to LAX, and came straight to Scotland,” McKidd recalls. “The next day, I was shooting this movie.”
‘This movie’ is Highlander, an upcoming production that retraces the steps of the original 1986 fantasy-action film by the same name. McKidd, who plays a “big warrior role,” will star alongside fellow Brits Henry Cavill and Russell Crowe. McKidd was meant to film Highlander last fall, in conjunction with Season 22 of Grey’s Anatomy (“Grey’s very kindly said, ‘Yeah, we’ll make the dates work,’” he attests) until Cavill injured his Achilles on set, forcing production to pause until “right now.”
Swept onto the Scottish highlands, McKidd’s back-to-back filming schedule only sharpened the contrast. “It’s pretty nuts to be going from that to this,” McKidd admits. Yet the timing was serendipitous. “I feel really lucky that the universe kind of designed everything to be like, ‘Okay, this is the end of this chapter in your career. [You’re done] playing Owen, but here’s something to dive straight into.’ I feel very grateful for that.”
Of course, Highlander won’t be his final chapter either. Once the project wraps, McKidd is bound for London, where he’ll play “an English auditor with a dark past and with a London accent” for British television. Describing the character as a “pinched, uptight, and sort of controlling anti-hero,” the role is another challenge — exactly as McKidd likes it.
“I realize now, like, ‘Wow, I was able to just play Owen without even thinking about it,’ you know? It became second nature after eighteen years,” he laughs. “I’m now out here, playing these other roles, and going, ‘Oh my God, I can’t figure out how this guy walks and how he thinks and how he eats cereal and how he engages with his wife,’ because this is not Owen Hunt. This is a completely different ballpark. It’s very exciting, but it really illuminates just how instinctive and effortless playing Owen became.”
That’s a realization only time can reveal. With Grey’s Anatomy in the rearview, McKidd describes the role as “a huge blessing.” From the moment Rhimes pitched the role — “a damaged veteran character” —McKidd was hooked. “Before that I played Rome on HBO, which was a depiction of a Roman legionary soldier who had been through many campaigns. So I understood the DNA: the damage and the toll being in a military situation brings to a human,” he says.
Despite Dr. Hunt’s on-screen bravado, McKidd’s early days were coloured by an anxious type of excitement. “It was intimidating. It’s a big hit show with all these big personalities: Patrick Dempsey and Eric Dean and all these big, important TV characters were right there, in front of me. I had to be this cocky, bullish presence who came in and didn’t care who anybody was,” McKidd says. “That was the whole concept of Owen. He was designed as quite a provocative, antagonistic antihero, and Shonda did that beautifully.”
What followed was an eighteen-year study in portraiture. Rather than prescribing personality, Rhimes encouraged McKidd to create his character through a series of suspenseful-to-the-last-second surgeries and shifting interpersonal dynamics. “It’s pretty incredible. You turn around… it’s like climbing Everest: you have to take one step, put one foot in front of another, and eventually you climb the mountain. That’s the only way to do it,” McKidd says. “You don’t notice it happen while it’s happening, and then you look around and you go, ‘Whoa.’”
As Dr. Hunt propelled the series, exploring fatherhood, unpacking PTSD, and — most controversially — navigating a series of explosive love triangles, McKidd uncovered deeper truths about himself. “We would do these big episodes, where the whole episode would be Cristina [Sandra Oh] and Owen in a therapy room talking or locked inside their house, trying to hash out the battle lines of their relationship and trying to fight for the relationship — even though things were difficult and hard and falling apart,” McKidd says. “I think I really learned a lot about myself in those moments.”
McKidd credits co-star Sandra Oh for his most transformative moments; the pair attended sessions with Oh’s acting coach (“a wonderful woman”), who introduced experimental, immersive methods into McKidd’s repertoire. “It was stuff that I hadn’t done before: using the dreamscape of our own subconscious minds [to bring] subconscious things to the experience of what Cristina and Owen were going through, and it really expanded me as an actor,” McKidd explains. “[The classes] made me see that, even in a network TV setting, you can really be fully alive in your creative life.”
To McKidd, Grey’s was something of an educational institution. In an interview with Vanity Fair earlier this month, McKidd even likened the experience to film school. Considering the breadth of his work on Grey’s, that’s an apt metaphor. Two seasons into the show, McKidd pursued directing — by the end of his tenure, he had directed an impressive 49 episodes.
“I had always wanted to try directing, and I realized this might be an opportunity. It was a way to keep myself really challenged. But I’ve grown to love it,” McKidd says. “I’ll get notes from guest stars who come to the show saying, ‘You made me feel so welcome and safe to play.’ It’s intimidating, when you come on a show as a guest star. It’s not your home, it’s these other people’s homes. That can be quite scary, and you can… clam up and get tight.”
McKidd can empathize. As a young actor, McKidd starred in the original production of Carol Churchill’s play “Far Away” — a role in which he was “terrified” of the character. McKidd recalls his anxious confession to director Stephen Daldry: “‘I remember saying to Stephen, ‘I can’t find anything to connect with in this character.’ Stephen just kept saying, ‘That’s good, that’s okay.’ He would give me the confidence to go, ‘You feel completely lost, your character feels lost — just be that, be in that.’”
When he sits in the director’s chair, McKidd taps into these experiences to create a warm, playful environment. “I was able to make [the actors] really feel, ‘You are safe. I’m here to make you feel safe. I am one of you. We are both the same. We are both actors. I know how scary this is to stand on a mark and have to sell a moment and expose myself to criticism, to do whatever it takes to be an actor in a network TV show,’” McKidd says. “That’s been the real gift of directing in the show for me.”
Upon graduating from Grey’s, McKidd was sure to put these skills to use. Recently, the actor announced a partnership between his production company, Ferryman Films, and the Scotland-based STV Studios; the pair will co-produce UK television dramas on a global scale. The debut effort, a small-screen adaptation of William Shaw’s crime thriller, The Red Shore, is currently in the works.
Hailing from Scotland, McKidd is excited to share stories from the region. “I’m really proud of my heritage, coming from this country, and I think there’s a lot of stories to be told here that aren’t. On the one hand, there’s Braveheart stories. On the other hand, there’s the gritty Trainspotting stories. But I think there’s a million, a myriad of other stories to tell in this country. I also think there’s amazing talent, an amazing group here. I felt really passionately about creating a production company that could really nurture new talent coming up,” says McKidd.
Among those talents are screenwriter Bruno Heller and playwright Kieran Hurley. McKidd’s passion is more than evident as he talks about the role. “[Hurley] is this raw talent of a playwright and I’m putting him alongside Bruno Heller, who’s a very experienced Hollywood showrunner. I can see, in real time, Kieran just soaking up all this knowledge from somebody like Bruno, and I can also see Bruno working with this young raw talent,” he gushes. “It’s this lovely sort of cross-pollination that I want to create.”
McKidd’s next move, it turns out, is a full choreography. “I had this instinct as a young actor to want to keep people guessing, not just do one thing or bring one kind of role. That’s what I’m trying to do with the company,” he says.
Does that mean he’ll return to Grey’s? Possibly — but not as Dr. Hunt. “[Grey’s] changed my life in many, many really great ways. I’m going to miss the camaraderie and the family of it all,” McKidd says. “But I’ll be back there to direct, I’m sure, and be back there in other ways. So it’s not really a full goodbye, although it definitely is an end of this chapter.”