Scott Foley knows a thing or two about death via Shonda Rhimes.
Before he was Jake Ballard on Scandal, Foley was Henry Burton on Grey's Anatomy, Teddy's (Kim Raver) husband who tragically died during surgery in eight. And then there was that whole Jake-almost-dying that recently went down on Scandal, but we'll get that that in a little bit. Still, even after making it through How to Get Killed By Shonda Rhimes 101, Foley was "blown away" by (Spoiler alert!) the shocking death of Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) on Grey's Anatomy. Like, really blown away.
"I watched it happen. I watched it live. It was crazy. I was on Grey's Anatomy and I couldn't believe it," Foley gushed to E! News at Scandal's Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) FYC Event. "Let's talk about that for a minute because I was blown away! Blown away. And I thought they did it so well. Like all the voice-over stuff. I was crazy for it. I thought it was great!"
But just before Grey's gutted us with Derek's devastating death, Scandal almost managed to wreck us, too, when we were lead to believe that Jake had been killed after being stabbed (a lot). While Foley says, "I'm no McDreamy!", Twitter still promptly had a meltdown over Jake's (possible) demise. So Foley decided to mess with them. Of course.
"When I was shooting it I felt like, ‘No, not a big deal,' and then people started freaking out so I sent out a tweet, sort of going along with it," Foley said, "And Shonda sent me an e-mail saying like, ‘It might be good to stay off Twitter for a week to sort of not give anybody any information about what's going to happen.'" (We later used the tweet as evidence to prove that Jake wasn't dead. Just saying.)
However, Foley does admit he was a little nervous after a major change was made while filming the big fight scene.
"In the script, it just said that he was stabbed once, but the way they ended up shooting it, obviously, we went back and shot it again where I was stabbed like six or seven times. And I thought, ‘Oh, god, am I really dead?!'"
Fortunately for us, he wasn't. Praise Shonda!
To hear some serious Scandal finale scoop from Foley, and why he thinks Grey's can survive the loss of Derek, press play on our interview with him above!
Scandal airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on ABC.