Bianca A. Santos Discusses Her Emotional Storyline on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ [Interview]

For Bianca A. Santos, the most surprising thing about working on Grey’s Anatomy was seeing how passionate everyone still was about the work, given the show is at the end of its 18th season.

Santos joined the cast at the end of this season as Kristen Clark, the wife of one of Link’s long-time patients. Kristen is pregnant, nearly ready to give birth, and her husband is battling cancer. It’s an emotional storyline that has both characters recurring through the season finale. 

I recently had the chance to chat with Santos about her role on Grey’s Anatomy and working with some of the original cast members, both on screen and off. 

“Walking onto the set of a show that has had so much success and history felt, oh… it felt intimidating, I’ll be honest,” Santos began. “But I was met with such warmth and I felt so welcomed that it made being a part of the show even for just four episodes out of 400 — which is so wild to say — it made the experience be so sweet.”

On Santos’ second episode, she has quite a lot of interaction with James Pickens Jr., who plays Richard Webber.

“To just act opposite him, and he’s been on the show since the beginning, was so awesome. Debbie Allen as well, and Chandra actually directed that episode. So talk about heavy-hitters just in that episode alone. I mean, I felt so supported and also like: okay, I really have to be on my A-game.”

Kristen’s scenes with those two actors begin because Catherine’s cancer has returned. (Catherine is played by Debbie Allen.)

“Our storylines cross because, obviously, my husband has cancer. So there’s this really interesting parallel that happens between us as a couple and them as a couple,” Santos noted.

“A lot of my character has parallels with [Richard], dealing with a spouse that has cancer. So incredibly complex and difficult and heartbreaking,” she continued. “We really get a chance to have a heart-to-heart and actually kind of grow from one another. So it’s really tender and it gives you all the Grey’s feels. It was one of my favorite scenes to film.”

Of course, Kristen and Simon also interact quite a bit with Link and Jo over the course of their story, which presents even more interesting possibilities. 

“Our relationship with Link is that we have been his patient for a while now. And I think you really get to see that history with how emotional he does get,” Santos explained. “It is definitely something that’s going to affect him and Jo, because you’re going to be on a ride with Kristen and Simon until the end of the finale.”

It’s a difficult storyline. Simon’s cancer means he may not live much longer, and Kristen is desperate for her baby to be born before he dies. She’s so desperate, in fact, that she initially tries to convince the doctors to let her have an early C-section.

Santos told me a bit about the emotional experience of playing this character on Grey’s Anatomy, especially with this storyline spanning over the course of several episodes. She said upon joining the cast, she really “hit the ground running.”

“It was a very quick turnaround jumping into the first episode. And so to jump straight into that, it’s heavy emotional work. And I think I’m so grateful that it’s a four-episode arc, because what was so great about that is I really got a chance to really sit into my character,” she said.

“I remember there’d be days where I’d show up to set and my makeup artist would say, ‘Are you crying today?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t really think I’m crying today,’ and then, sure enough, we’d be there filming and I’m crying. And I would come back to her and I’d be like, ‘I guess I’m crying today!'”

“That kind of thing, I don’t like to plan it. I think that comes off forced. I more so just sit in the truth of Kristen and I sit in the truth of the circumstances. Which is really, really high stakes and a really layered, complex story. So safe to say I am always crying in most of these episodes.”

The latest episode that Santos appeared on, Grey’s Anatomy Season 18 Episode 18, “Stronger Than Hate,” not only gave her the chance to work with James Pickens Jr. and Debbie Allen, but she also worked with Chandra Wilson, who directed that episode.

“What’s so amazing working with Chandra is she’s one of the original three. So she’s been so intricately woven into every aspect of the show from acting in it, to working with multiple directors, to becoming a director herself. When you have someone that’s so tapped in to what something is, then it’s just so easy for her to communicate to other actors, to know exactly what each scene needs,” Santos said.

“It was an incredibly rewarding experience just for me to work with her and watch her work, because the ease in which everything happened with her was super admirable.”

Santos also noted her admiration for the writer of that episode, Julie Wong, and the episode’s powerful content as it deals with a hate crime. “The episode specifically deals with that in a very delicate, heartbreaking way. And that’s not my storyline, but I just give kudos to the writer who authentically wrote that from her place and from where she’s coming from.”

In addition to her work on Grey’s Anatomy, Santos has another project in the works that she’s excited about.

“I produced and was the lead actress for a feature film that we put together called Stronghold. It’s an indie [film]. It’s a thriller. And I really just wanted to put out a narrative with voices that were women of color and essentially get my friends and people that I believed in to be a part of a project, because I think that’s the world that we’re in,” she said. “It definitely was a really exciting challenge and something that we’re going to make the festival rounds, but it also was happening concurrently with Grey’s,” she said.

“That was an interesting juggle. I love the chaos because it’s all creative and it all builds on one another. It’s almost like at some point they were feeding into each other, which was great.”

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*Featured image credit: Lisandra Vasquez

Grey’s Anatomy’s two-part Season 18 finale airs this Thursday, May 26th beginning at 8/7c.

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