‘Grey’s Anatomy’: The Brooke Smith statement (and a follow-up question)

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In light of the controversial firing of Brooke Smith, who — until Thursday night, anyway — plays “Grey’s” Dr. Erica Hahn, executive producer Shonda Rhimes issued the following statement:

‘Brooke Smith was obviously not fired for playing a lesbian. Clearly it’s not an issue as we have a lesbian character on the show — Calliope Torres. Sara Ramirez is an incredible comedic and dramatic actress, and we wanted to be able to play up her magic. Unfortunately, we did not find that the magic and chemistry with Brooke’s character would sustain in the long run. The impact of the Callie/Erica relationship will be felt and played out in a story for Callie. I believe it belittles the relationship to simply replace Erica with ‘another lesbian.’ If you’ll remember, Cristina mourned the loss of Burke for a full season.’

But here’s a question: Since when is Callie a lesbian? In last week’s episode the doc gave a whole “maybe I will see leaves, but I will also see flowers — there might be a whole forest” speech, which seemed to make it clear that the character, who has also been sleeping with Mark Sloan, considered herself bisexual. When asked for clarification, Rhimes and ABC declined to comment.

— Shawna Malcom