Jake Borelli on Why Grey's Anatomy's Gay Blood Ban Story Is Personal
Grey’s Anatomy resident Dr. Levi Schmitt since the pandemic began. The beloved character, who came out as gay at the same time Jake Borelli, who portrays him, came out publicly, worked amid the trauma of early COVID-19 last season, and suffered full-on burnout after losing his first patient under the hospital’s new training method this season.
Toss in Levi’s breakup with his handsome doctor boyfriend Nico (Alex Landi) and his mom’s major health scare, and the young doc was primed for a meltdown this season that had him reckoning with leaving medicine altogether.Borelli, who says he’s grateful for the opportunity to portray Levi but adds it was tough to play out the COVID storylines almost in real time with the pain of the pandemic in the world, was already noticing parallels between his character’s burnout and a bit of his own.
But for Borelli, a gay blood ban story that involves Levi in Grey’s Anatomy’s 18th season finale (also the show’s whopping 400th episode), is deeply personal.
He shares that the story elided some barriers between him and his character.The ban, which was put in place more than 35 years ago and barred men who have sex with men from donating blood, and the subsequent adjustments to it got Borelli so fired up that he pushed for some of his opinions to also filter into character’s point of view.In 2015, the FDA changed the lifetime ban on men who have sex with men to a requirement of a full year of abstinence before donating blood.
