Jake Borelli Explains 'Grey's Anatomy' Exit After Levi's Final Episode, Implies It Wasn't His Choice to Leave
Jake Borelli‘s final episode as Levi Schmitt on Grey’s Anatomy just aired and he’s breaking his silence on his exit from the long-running ABC medical drama series.
News of Jake‘s departure from the show was first leaked at the end of season 20 back in May 2024. He returned for season 21 in a limited capacity to wrap up his character’s storyline.
SPOILER ALERT! Don’t continue reading if you don’t want to know what happened.
Keep reading to find out more…
In his final episode, Jake‘s character Levi decided to leave Seattle and move to Texas after accepting a new position elsewhere. His new boyfriend James (Michael Thomas Grant) is joining him in the move.
Jake spoke to Deadline about his exit from the show and implied how it wasn’t his choice to leave. It sounds like his exit was story-driven.
“Essentially, me and my team got a call from the showrunner [Meg Marinis], and she told us that this was the route that they were thinking about taking for Levi — to round out his growth and to give him a place to be outside of Grey Sloan, someplace that could see him for who he was, and for the audience, to be able to see him grow, finally, into the doctor we’ve all known he could be,” Jake said.
He wishes he could have been in the rest of the season.
“I certainly would have loved to have it stretched the whole season. I knew, in terms of the cast being so large and the storytelling that Meg wanted to do this season, it wasn’t going to span that long; we knew the time period that we had,” Jake said. “We certainly had to cram it into these seven episodes, which I would have loved for it to be longer. I would have loved for it to keep going forever, but we’ll see. Time will tell.”
Jake is willing to make future appearances as Levi!
“I’m very hopeful that Levi will come back. I think the audience is interested to see what Levi is up to, I certainly am. He has so many connections to people still at the hospital, like you said, Jo, so I couldn’t imagine the birth of those babies without Levi bending the world to get there,” he said. “We’ll see what Meg does. I think we also have this wonderful opportunity to have him grow off camera, and then to have him come back at some point and really be this boss that we know he can be. We’ll see what’s in store for the future of the show.”
Learn all about the recent cast changes on Grey’s Anatomy.