Grey’s Anatomy has had massive character turnover throughout the years, but as popular doctors leave the show, either through dying horribly, or contracting brain cancer, or a slew of other reasons, and more surgeons must take their place. It is this constantly revolving door of characters that allows Grey’s to feel fresh, even after 16 seasons on air.
Sometimes, the series knows exactly what to do with a character. Sometimes, it takes a while for the character to warm up. Take Andrew DeLuca for instance, who didn’t really have much to do in his first few seasons, but now he’s becoming a more confident and self-assured presence, and fans are learning more about him with every episode.
10 DeLuca First Appeared In Season 11
As previously stated, during his first couple of seasons, DeLuca just basically faded into the background. Not much was known about him and he didn’t particularly contribute anything worthwhile to the storylines. As such, many fans would be forgiven for not realizing that his debut episode was actually the penultimate episode of Season 11.
Sure, his first full season was Season 12, but Andrew appeared to help the Grey Sloan staff during a particularly nasty tunnel collapse. Initially, his surgical skills out in the field were extremely impressive, so much so that the other doctors assumed that he was an attending.
9 The Other Interns Didn’t Like Him
We never really got to know any of DeLuca’s peers as they were even blander than he was. The Annoying Blonde One had a few scenes, and there was the Brain Fainting One, but fans likely can’t actually remember their names off the top of their head without a quick Google search first.
All viewer knew about DeLuca’s fellow interns was that they didn’t like him because they thought he pretended to be an attending on purpose to gain favor with the actual attendings. This led them to shun DeLuca, who was left without any friends, or even a place to live. Who would have thought surgeons could be so petty?
8 DeLuca Lived With Arizona For A While
DeLuca’s increasing homelessness was obviously a problem and one that was only going to get worse. Happily, Arizona was also in a bit of a pickle. Since she and Callie had split up in the previous season, she needed a roommate to share the living costs. Unfortunately, she had had no takers because everyone was intimidated by a strong and capable woman, the unfortunate truth women in society face.
Arizona was getting increasingly desperate and annoyed, so when DeLuca moved in, she originally thought he was doing it as a joke. Fortunately, though, he wasn’t and the two lived together for a surprisingly long time. They also became good friends, although this wasn’t touched upon much in the series.
7 His Father Was A Famous Doctor Until He Went Mad
Season 15 of Grey’s Anatomy really started to make DeLuca far more three dimensional, first by having him fancy Meredith, and then having him slowly reveal that he was also the child of a famous surgeon. Unlike Meredith or even Jackson, however, DeLuca’s family were famous for all the wrong reasons.
His father was a surgeon back in Italy and suffered from a manic episode. DeLuca Senior operated on seven different patients consecutively, without food, drink or sleep, and killed 4 of the patients. Because of his connections, DeLuca’s father got away, consequence-free, but his family was ripped apart by the incident.
6 He Had An Unrequited Crush On Jo Wilson
This crush sort of sprang up out of thin air. One minute, DeLuca was dating Maggie, and the next, he had suddenly decided that he liked Jo, who was in a relationship with Alex at the time, although, to be fair, things weren’t exactly going swimmingly between the two at the time.
This crush was just way more hassle than anyone could have predicted. First, DeLuca had to help an absolutely smashed Jo back to her apartment, then he got pulverized by Alex, and finally, he got rejected by Jo, not once, but twice. Ouch. You really had to feel for the poor guy at this point.
5 DeLuca Dated, And Dumped, Maggie Pierce
This was a relationship that could have been quite cute if it wasn’t so awkward to watch. In fairness, this was mostly down to Maggie and her neurotic behavior when it came to dating her subordinates. Essentially, Maggie found DeLuca attractive and she liked him, but she was embarrassed because he was an intern.
However, just when things looked like they would be looking up for the couple, who had come out to their colleagues with no consequences, DeLuca suddenly decided, seemingly out of thin air, that he would rather not be dating Maggie because all his peers assumed he was using her to get surgeries. This was a complete U-turn and made DeLuca look like a jerk.
4 His Mother Died When He Was Young
Is it an essential skill for every employee at Grey Sloan memorial to have at least one tragedy happen in their life before coming to the hospital? We know Grey’s is a medical drama, but it’s a bit of an odd hiring policy, to say the least. DeLuca turned out to be no exception, as his mother died when he was young.
The circumstances of his mother’s death are fairly vague but, according to DeLuca, his mom, who was then living in the United States, went to Italy to visit DeLuca’s sister, Carina. Carina then called him, telling DeLuca to come quickly because their mom was severely ill. When DeLuca arrived, his mom had died before Carina even made the call and she had lied because she had wanted to give him the news in person.
3 DeLuca Worked As An EMT Before Going To Medical School
Before going to medical school and training to be a surgeon, DeLuca decided to become an EMT. DeLuca said that he was extremely passionate about his EMT job and that it was what convinced him to go to medical school to train to become a proper doctor. However, being an EMT also had some massive drawbacks.
On only his second callout, DeLuca was asked to assist with an MVC, involving a mother and a young child. DeLuca set to work on the mother, trying to help her, but she was only focused on one thing: her dead toddler in her arms. DeLuca said that her cries were the one reason that he didn’t want to go into Peds.
2 His Real Name is Andrea
DeLuca is Italian and was born in Italy and lived there for a number of years, before moving to the US with his mother, having left his father after he killed a number of patients while suffering a manic episode. Because of his Italian heritage, it was a bit odd that he was introduced as Andrew in his debut episode.
It transpired that his real name was actually Andrea. Giacomo Gianniotti, the actor who plays DeLuca, is also of Italian descent and so it was nice to have an actor on the show playing a character from their original country (Kevin McKidd and Camilla Luddington are both from Britain, but their characters are American).
1 DeLuca Was Drunk When He And Meredith Shared Their First Kiss
In Season 14, viewers got to know DeLuca marginally better as it turned out that he had history with one of the new interns, Sam Bello. Unfortunately, Bello soon fell victim to the traditional Grey’s habit of making all interns annoying, incompetent morons. Even more unfortunately, DeLuca didn’t realize this and started dating Bello.
Later on in the season, Bello was forced to leave Grey Sloan for Switzerland, leaving DeLuca utterly devastated by his loss. After all, it’s not like they have cellphones or internet in the Alps. During Alex and Jo’s wedding, DeLuca had too much to drink and drunkenly made out with a surprised, yet flattered, Meredith.
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