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Callie and Arizona Will Say “I Do” in May on “Grey’s Anatomy”

Callie said yes. Callie said yes!

Lesbian visibility will take a center stage May 5 when Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) and Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) walk down a pink-and-white decorated aisle and say their “I do’s” on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy.

During a recent set visit on location at the woody and beautiful Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flitridge, Calif., Ramirez and Capshaw were joined by cast and crew to film the couple’s elaborate wedding, in which both actresses spent the cold and windy day in Amsale gowns specially designed for the scene.

“It seems like absolutely a natural next step [for Callie and Arizona], especially after everything they’ve been through this season,” said Grey’s writer Stacy McKee, who has penned several episodes of the medical drama, including the May 5 wedding. “They split apart, they got back together. Then in the musical episode, Callie has a near-death experience and it really solidifies Arizona’s feelings for Callie.

“By the end of [the music event] is when Callie says yes,” McKee said. “After that journey that they’ve been on – which has been magical and musical, we couldn’t not have an amazing wedding for them.”

Ramirez, who has long been a champion of LGBT rights, hopes the lesbian wedding gets people talking about gay marriage, whether they support it or not.

“Obviously the visibility is incredible,” Ramirez said between takes. “You can’t make everybody happy and I’m aware of that. But if people are passionate and [the episode] triggers civic dialogue and communication and compassion for one another, I’m thrilled. Not everyone is going to agree on everything all the time, and that’s OK. That’s what makes our world interesting and challenging and gives us the opportunity to grow with each other and alongside each other if we chose to.”

Capshaw hopes the equality message comes through in her work. “I feel like if you went about it another way – ‘I’m going to break that door down and make a difference’ – that would be great and all but you might get your eyes off the prize in doing the work the way that it should be done,” she said, joking that her only trepidation about the marriage was wearing a wedding dress “before I was ready after having a baby.” “I feel like if you focus on the work and it’s really great, it will gets work done in another way.”

Co-star Sandra Oh, who plays Cristina Yang and is among the wedding guests with Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd)and Chief Richard Weber (James Pickens Jr.) feels the “Calzona” wedding will make it easier for society as a whole to accept gay marriage.

“We see two characters getting married and you know and love them,” Oh said. “The more we see the characters and the people that we really love and respect expressing their story lines, however that unfolds, I think the easier it is for a society at whole or who ever is watching to metabolize relationships. These are characters you hang out with every week. You know them, you see them and good golly, after you see the musical episode and what they go through, why would you not want them to get married?”

For McKee, the politics of gay marriage – it’s not legal in Washington, where Grey’s is set – was a “large factor.”

“We felt it was very important on a show that will reach many, many viewers that we have for what all purposes for our characters is a very real marriage because we feel very strongly that that’s an important thing,” she said. “We didn’t want this to be a little affair, we wanted it to feel like a big grand wedding. The fact that it’s not legal is a story point in the episode to a certain degree in that a very important person in Callie’s life isn’t here.”

McKee noted that the episode will be a romantic and formal Catholic wedding and will feature both Callie and Arizona’s parents, who may struggle with acceptance for religious reasons – a story line that was inspired by a friend of hers. “That’s part of why I wanted to write this episode – it just felt like it was a very timely and very important story to tell.”

Callie’s Catholic upbringing does take a toll her in the episode as she struggles to find a balance between her love life and religion. “Callie was raised Catholic and she loves her church and she loves her God, and that’s OK,” Capshaw said.

After consulting with Bailey (episode director Chandra Wilson) – who officiates the nuptials – Callie turns the corner and winds up getting the traditional wedding she’s always dreamed of. “Arizona in the beginning of the episode has been an empowered woman who knows exactly who she is and has known all her life,” Ramirez said. “Callie has been on a different journey; she’s investigating it and experiencing it and figuring it out as she goes, especially with her parents who are very Catholic – her mother in particular.

“Callie starts to understand and embrace the notion that God is everywhere and that you don’t have to be in a church to share God’s presence of love and acceptance and to have a union with someone and a wedding and ceremony that means everything to you,” Ramirez said.

Added Capshaw: “That’s what’s interesting: Arizona coming from a military family where the military isn’t exactly friendly with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and you have a father and a mother and there’s never a question of if they’re OK with it; it’s literally a non-issue, which is really what we’re aiming for, right?”

As for the vows themselves – Bailey says, “I now pronounce you wife and wife” – McKee researched the language used in traditional Catholic weddings and incorporated the way the character would go about officiating.

“It’s a very traditional, classic way of pronouncing two people as a married couple,” McKee says. “In the writers’ room, [that they’re gay] is such an afterthought. To us, they’re just our favorite romantic couple right now so they needed the most romantic wedding. … I don’t think of them in a gay or straight fashion; they’re the ones who are in love so they’re the ones who get married this season.”

Getting to the altar hasn’t been an easy road for Callie and Arizona, and Capshaw is well aware of upset viewers who questioned Callie “cheating” with Mark (Eric Dane). “I do read AfterEllen.com, I know a lot of people were upset,” she said. “I think it’s always been pretty clear that Callie’s character is bisexual. While there was certainly, in Arizona’s mind, a betrayal of their relationship, I do think a lot of people got up in arms about the gender of it. I don’t think they’d have been as upset if Callie had cheated with a girl instead of a guy.”

The actress questioned the writers at one point when Arizona says, “That’s my baby in there” – because she felt that Arizona hadn’t “earned that right.”

“I remember going to the writers and saying, ‘That’s all fine and great if she gets to earn that right to call that baby her own,'” Capshaw said. “Callie earns Arizona’s partnership so that Arizona would feel like that was her baby. But that’s not to be taken lightly.”

As for what comes next for primetime’s leading lesbians, she has been pitching Arizona treating a patient with sexuality issues. “I got a letter from a young woman who came out to her parents when she was 19 and they decided that she was not going to be part of their family any longer,” Capshaw said. “Then 10 years later her mom, being an avid fan of the show, had watched the episode where Arizona has the ‘Good Man in a Storm’ speech where she says to Callie’s father, ‘I love your daughter and my parents raised me to be a good man in a storm.’ It’s a wonderful speech. The mother called her after 10 years. It wasn’t happy-go-lucky and she didn’t tell her to come home, but it was the opening of a dialogue.”

Capshaw ultimately hopes the Grey’s wedding has an impact similar to Portia and Ellen DeGeneres. “I feel like Portia and Ellen’s marriage must have done so much,” she said. “This has the potential to as well.”

For Ramirez, portraying Callie is the ultimate wedding gift. “This character has helped me so much,” she said. “Playing this character has really opened me up to understand the world and human condition a lot better. It’s been a real gift.”

McKee, meanwhile, hopes the fact that it’s a gay wedding is just a passing thought.

“I hope that people who are fans of the show and fans of these characters enjoy the magic and romance and shed a tear at a beautiful wedding,” McKee said. “And that it becomes an afterthought that it happens to be a wedding with two women. It’s just a beautiful love story at the end of the day.”

The Grey’s Anatomy wedding episode airs Thursday, May 5 at 9 p.m. Are you excited to see Callie and Arizona march down the aisle together to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” after saying their vows?

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