Want to know what’s next for Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) on Grey’s Anatomy? Well, look no further, as Giacomo recently opened up about their budding new romance in an EXCLUSIVE interview with HollywoodLife! When the show returns on Jan. 17, we’ll find Meredith and DeLuca trapped in an elevator together, and it’s due to that fiasco that DeLuca takes the lead in the love triangle with Meredith and Link (Chris Carmack). In the fall finale on Nov. 15, we saw that “Andrew kind of expressed his feelings for Meredith unabashedly and kind of went on and sort of put it all on the line and was like, ‘Let’s hope this works out.’ She didn’t exactly turn him down, but she kind of said, ‘I need a minute to kind of think about this’,” Giacomo explained. “She had been kind of running from him all day and avoiding him, and so now that they’re stuck in this elevator, I think what we can expect from this next episode is that she can’t run, she can’t hide and we’re gonna get to see both of them express their feelings and really have an in-depth conversation about themselves and their feelings and I think in this sort of chess game with the love triangle between Chris Carmack’s character, Link, her and I. This is a time where my pawn moves forward, I think, because I get this sort of coveted alone time with her. So [Link will] have some catching up to do after this episode.”
Despite DeLuca’s major step forward with Meredith, Giacomo isn’t sure how their new romance will turn out. “We’re [currently filming episode 15 and] continuing to explore both [relationships], you know? Both Link and DeLuca’s relationships with Meredith, and like I said before, I think it’s kind of a little bit like a chess game of one moving forward and the other one moving forward in this slight lead, and then another person catches up and then the other person’s in the lead for a bit and we’re sort of riding this fine line of a race.”
But no matter who ends up with Meredith, Giacomo revealed that he was excited by the prospect of DeLuca exploring a romance with Meredith. He explained, “Starting as an intern on the show, who was very much sort of kind of bringing in scans here and there, to where my role has grown today is quite a journey, which has been really fun to play. Krista Vernoff — our show-runner — said she wanted to tell a story about a woman being with a younger man and how that can be empowering and sexy and how often in Hollywood men are usually portrayed with leading women being 20 years younger than them, and it’s very normal and nobody bats an eye. It’s been very sort of accepted, but whenever a woman is in that position, there’s a stigma that comes along with it, which there’s no reason for, obviously.”
“Krista said, ‘I would like to tell that story and kind of flip that on its head in Hollywood.’ I said, ‘Great. I’d love to help you tell that story.’ And I think Ellen is so lovely and we’ve worked together for the past couple of years and she’s got Italian roots and we hit it off very, very quickly. She’s always been a really, really gracious and generous scene partner and lovely person, and so I’m happy I get to work more with her and spend more time with her, and we’ve had a lot of fun working together so far,” Giacomo continued.
Interestingly, Giacomo is pretty tight with his co-stars off-screen as well. After the cast learned Giacomo supported My Friend’s Place, a Los Angeles-based charity that helps homeless youth between the ages of 12 and 25, they helped him come up with funds to donate to the organization! This past December, they even presented the organization with a check for $40,000, which included money earned by the cast during an appearance on Celebrity Family Feud. “That all came about thanks to Chandra Wilson (Bailey). Originally, she was invited to be on with her [real-life] family. That turned into having cast members from Grey’s come on and play against actors from Station 19. It was a very friendly competition, and Chandra was very generous. She immediately thought of me and said, ‘We’d love to have My Friend’s Place be the beneficiary.’”
Grey’s Anatomy returns to ABC on Jan. 17, with new episodes airing every Thursday at 8pm ET. You can also catch Giacomo in Acquainted, a new movie that he produced and stars in, during which he plays a man who faces a romantic dilemma.