Kim Raver picks the best love interest for Teddy Altman between Owen, Cass & Henry in Grey’s Anatomy

The energy in the room was electric. Applause thundered, music swelled, and the crowd was alive with anticipation. A familiar voice cuts through the noise: “How are you doing?” The response is warm, genuine. “Good. Good. I’m happy to be here.” Another voice chimes in, lighter, almost giddy: “How are you?” The interviewer leans in, grinning. “Are you excited?”

The subject of all this attention lets out a breath. “Okay. Okay. Wow.”

Then comes the question that everyone has been dying to ask: What was it like working with Kim as a director, and with Nico as both actor and director?

The storyteller wastes no time. “Great question,” they say, and the room leans in.

They start with Kim. And it’s clear from the first syllable — this isn’t a rehearsed compliment. This is genuine admiration. “It’s such a pleasure to work with Kim. Honestly, the energy she brings, the excitement…” There’s a pause, a realization. “I think it was your first too, wasn’t it?” A nod. A shared smile. The debut. Both of them, stepping into uncharted waters together. “Really amazing, because you were so excited, and then we were all so excited. We were like, ‘Yeah, let’s do this.’ I just had a blast.”

But there’s more to it than raw enthusiasm. There’s craft. “It’s great to work with a director who is also an actor,” they explain. “Someone who knows you to an extent, so you can talk and be honest with each other. She just knows how to speak to me. I know what she wants the moment she says it.”

Then the story shifts. And the temperature in the room changes slightly, as if the memory itself demands a deeper breath.

“Working with Nico is incredible.”

They describe it like watching a masterclass unfold in real-time. “He has such an incredible ability to take a note and just go into a beautiful, present, multi-layered place.” The storyteller’s voice tightens with admiration. “I had such a great time directing him.”

And then they take us there — into a specific scene. A scene with a character named Scott. Pages and pages of medical dialogue. Dense, technical, the kind of material that could bury an actor if they weren’t careful. But the director had a vision. A very specific one.

They wanted to be inside his head. To follow the chaos. His ADHD. The whirlwind of thoughts ricocheting through his mind. “I wanted you to follow him,” they say, “like you were right there with him, spinning through everything going on in his head.”

The actor listened. And then he delivered.

“Go back and watch that scene,” the director urges, their voice almost a command now, alive with the thrill of the memory. “Nico is so beautiful in that scene. There are so many twists and turns he has to make. I told him, ‘Just think it — because I’m going to be so close to you.’ And he did. He delivered it so beautifully.”

But the storytelling doesn’t stop there. It accelerates. You can almost see the director sprinting across the set, ideas firing faster than words. “I’d come running up to him: ‘Go here. Go there.’ I had this warner I wanted to do. ‘Okay, are you okay? You’re going to be coming out of the shower. No shirt. You need to go here. Say this line. Go around. Go.'”

A breathless pause.

“And we did it. They were great.”

And then the storyteller reveals the secret behind the magic. That locker room scene? It wasn’t just blocking. It wasn’t just choreography. It was a dance. “We rehearsed it in a room like this, all of us in our regular clothes, over and over and over again.” The director had the vision locked in their mind, but they had to translate it — to the camera operator, to the actors, to everyone holding a piece of the puzzle. And every single person looked back and said, “Let’s go. Let’s do it.”

“It was so much fun.”

The gratitude spills out. “Thank you so much. Thank you.” Laughter erupts. Someone jokes about a translation mishap — “Let me help you translate” — and the room cracks up again. “I’m just kidding,” comes the quick retort. “I could never.” “Not like you,” someone fires back. The banter flies fast and loose, the warmth undeniable.

Then the tone shifts once more. A new question lands, heavy with fandom weight: Which team are you on? Adams and Spencer? Simon and Henry? Or maybe Teddy and Owen?

The director laughs. “That’s hard. Like, I can’t answer that.”

The crowd doesn’t let them off the hook. “What do you think?”

A beat. A wry smile. “I do like… No, let’s get clear. Be clear about that.”

The room hangs on the edge, waiting for a verdict that may never come. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Because what we’ve just witnessed isn’t about picking sides. It’s about two debuts, a shared vision, a locker room turned into a dance floor, and the kind of collaboration that makes you forget you’re working at all.

This was the beginning of something. And everyone in that room knew it.