Dempsey on whether he'll be taking on dramatic projects given the climate:

"I think it depends on how the story is told and how you connect to it. I’m not going to say 'no' to anything at this point. Until you read it, it becomes a hypothetical. The opportunities I’ve had, the reason I did Enchanted was because I thought it was an original idea, and that is rare to find. And I could take my daughter to see it. It was a positive message. I feel that was important. Maid of Honor was something that kept coming back they said, 'You should do this movie.' I didn’t know if I was going to do it and they kept offering me more money. And I said, 'I’ll do it.' And I had a lot more control of who would come in as far as the director is concerned, and it gave me a new challenge of, 'Can I go into this world of producing, and what can we do with this script, how can we make the best story possible given what’s in front of us?' And I learned a lot from that. Hopefully, that’s a success on some level. The next movie is What Do I Do Now? Is it something that’s dramatic about the world we’re living in, or will it be another comedy? It really depends on what the options are and who is writing it and who the filmmaker will be."

On his next project, What Do I Do Now?

"It comes out in May. It was supposed to come out this month and we pushed it back to May. Michelle Monaghan plays my best friend. My character has invested the coffee collar and has tons of money, and has the inability to commit to a relationship. And the only relationship he has been in was with his best friend. She comes back from Scotland with a gentleman who has asked her to marry him and asks me to be the maid of honor. And I realize at that point that this is the woman of my dreams and I have to undermine the marriage. It’s more of a Four Weddings and a Funeral kind of tone and a 'Working Title' kind of comedy. That’s what we were shooting for. Paul Weiland directed it. He did a movie called 66, a sweet little movie. The DP did A Room With a View, so it has a really beautiful look to the movie. And once we started getting those things in place we were starting something different. We’ll see how it comes out."

On how the writer's strike affects Grey’s Anatomy:

"We just got our last script in, so we’ll have eleven done. So that’s half a season. That could be the season for us this year, it depends."

Patrick Dempsey on how the strike will impact and affect Los Angeles:

"it’s really going to hurt the crew people and the people who live check to check in different businesses around this town are going to get hurt badly, and it’s a shame to see that. I wish there was going to be some compromise... I don’t think it affects the people who are above the line. I think it will be the below-the-line people who are going to be devastated by this. I had a conversation with some of the teamsters. They don’t want to cross the picket line but they have to cross the picket line, it’s in their contract and they’re conflicted. It has people really upset. And some people are aware of what happened in ’88 and what happened a few years ago with the commercial strike. It devastated a lot of things and it’s not like our economy is great to begin with, and it’s one more thing to depress everybody and we don’t need it."

On McDreamy moving on without Meredith in Grey’s Anatomy:

"Yeah, I think it needs to happen. They need to move forward with their relationship. We’ve gone as far we can with the back and forth, I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you. It just drives me crazy. We need to go forward a little bit more."

Patrick Dempsey's favorite Christmas tradition:

"I bought a home ten, eleven years ago in Maine that we used to go and visit as kids, and that was a huge relief for me. I knew I could always return home and I would return home and create the image I wanted, not what I necessarily grew up with. The house was built in 1834. I got married there. And it’s part of the tradition to get back for the holidays and certainly for Christmas. For me that’s the Christmas gift is to go back with the family and go back there and to ski and toboggan and walk in the woods and give them that consistency is important for me."

On whether fans will now see a musical episode of Grey’s Anatomy:

"God, I hope not. We jumped enough sharks already and if we do that, we’re really in trouble. [laughs]"