Actor Isaiah Washington was fired seven years ago from his role as Dr. Preston Burke on the hit show “Grey’s Anatomy.” Washington’s character returns to reprise his role for a few episodes to tie in with his lover, Dr. Christina Yang, as she prepares for a new chapter in her life that will continue off screen.
The last episode of Grey’s showed Dr. Yang heading to Zurich to speak at a conference, when Dr. Burke unexpectedly appears out of the shadows. Fans may have been hoping that Yang and Burke would be back together, but as the episode went on it was revealed that he was married with two children. He reveals that he was trying to get Yang to move to Zurich to work at his hospital and had organized the entire conference to get her to come all the way from Seattle. He explained that he no longer wanted the job and wanted her to take over for him.
Despite the bad press that Washington received for the anti-gay slurs, GLAAD (a group that promotes LGBT people in the media) was happy about his return. They told the Hollywood Reporter that they stand by him now as he has shown support for the LGBT community by doing a number of PSAs and speaking out for marriage equality over the last few years. He insisted in 2007 that the incident was not his fault and that Knight should have been let go instead. He stated that he used the slur when he was having an argument with fellow co-star Patrick Dempsey (Dr. Derek Shepherd) and had apologized for it.
(Hattip to Daily Mail UK, Naturally Moi)
