Don't get your hopes up (or down) for a full Jo/Jackson romance just yet.
Grey's Anatomy star Camilla Luddington was a guest on Tuesday's episode of the iHeartRadio podcast Scrubbing In with Becca Tilley and Tanya Rad and naturally, she had a lot to say about her character's latest romantic decisions.
After being left by her husband (Justin Chambers), Jo (Luddington) was in need of a "sex bridge" to help her get herself back out there. She chose Jackson (Jesse Williams), and after a rough start, they did end up sleeping together. While Luddington says she doesn't know where the storyline is headed, she's been hoping for something fun to do with Williams for a while.
"Jesse and I have a lot of fun together. We have always pitched like, please put some scenes together, please make them funny scenes, like we'd love to like joke around together. And then these ended up happening," she said. "I had no idea until Krista Vernoff, our showrunner, said to us, 'Oh, I'm gonna put you guys together for this like really fun hook up,' and then I didn't know where it was going. I still don't really know where it's going to be honest."
Luddington said she never imagined that Jo and Jackson would be single at the same time, since Jackson was with April (Sarah Drew) and then Jo was married to Alex. This hook-up is more about Jo living the single life than actually trying to start a relationship with anybody.
"I also love that she's single because I was, I was like thinking about going into the season for the first time, with this character being single and I was trying to remember a period of time where she really was single, and she really hasn't been she was like, not with Alex but still in love with him. So this is the first time that she's like, 'I need sex, who's up?'"
For now, she describes Jo and Jackson as "sex friends," and maybe Grey's Anatomy's first sex friends since Callie (Sara Ramirez) and Mark (Eric Dane) were sleeping together way back when.
"I was joking with Jesse because I was like, I feel like a lot of girls in the past with Jackson Avery are like, 'Please love me, you're Jackson Avery.'" Luddington said. "And I love that Jo was like, 'No thank you, like, not happening. Please can we just have sex?' I like that. I think it's really fun."
While kissing on screen has become more complicated in a pandemic, Luddington hasn't actually had to experience that yet. She revealed that the Jo and Jackson storyline was planned and partially shot before production shut down in March, and all that kissing is old footage filmed before the pandemic took hold, cut together with new footage.
"Like the dialogue beforehand was [filmed] this season because things are different," she said. "The storylines are completely different actually as to how we come about to this point, but the kissing was pre-COVID."
As Luddington prepares to find out what kissing on TV during a pandemic is like, keep up with all the current couples/sex friends in the Grey's Anatomy world below!
Grey's Anatomy airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on ABC.