InTouch Deletes Article About Patrick Dempsey's Alleged Intern Affair

InTouch has deleted an article from their website alleging that Patrick Dempsey (RIP McDreamy) was fired from Grey’s Anatomy because he cheated on his wife with a 20-something show intern.

As BuzzFeed reporter Rachel Zarrell points out, the article in question was removed sometime between its publication Wednesday afternoon and this morning, though it’s still cached online. It originally appeared in this week’s print issue of the magazine, and the gossip has also been picked up by sites like Radar Online and The Inquisitr.

The piece alleges that both Ellen Pompeo and Shonda Rhimes were angry about Dempsey’s affair, and that the situation escalated to the point where they killed his character off even though he had a year left on his contract.

“[His co-star] Ellen Pompeo found out and was angry because she’s close friends with Jillian, so of course, she told her,” the insider explains, adding that the situation even led to McDreamy’s death on the show in April after the actress spilled what she knew to the show’s creator and executive producer, Shonda Rhimes.

“Shonda has no patience for that kind of behavior.”

The Radar piece—which went up early Thursday morning—goes even further, alleging that Dempsey’s started sleeping with this unnamed young woman since August and that even after she was fired, it affected his work performance. (Dempsey denied all the claims to Radar through his rep.)

“It was obvious to everyone Patrick was [sleeping with] her,” the insider told Radar. “It got very messy and emotional on set and became a huge liability.”

“Patrick would remain in his trailer after hooking up with her on set and refuse to come out,” the source claimed. “He had also been complaining about the storyline of his character, and felt he wasn’t getting enough screen time.”

Amid the drama, Dempsey was “suspended” for a while, according to the source, and the female staffer was allegedly moved off set to Rhimes’ production offices.

In an interview with EW conducted before the episode showing Derek’s death aired, Dempsey was… vague about how the plot twist had come about, though he did claim that he was on good terms with both Rhimes and Pompeo:

You signed a two-year deal last year that would keep you on the show through season 12. So…?

Yes. You’re right. (Pause) It just sort of evolved. It just kind of happened. [Being written off] was something that was kind of surprising and uh, just naturally came to be. I like the way it has all played out.

And more:

When did you find out that your character would be written off?

Things happened very quickly, where we were like, Oh this is where it’s going to go. It just sort of unfolded in a very organic way. I don’t remember the date. It was not in the fall. February or March. It happened very quickly.

Rumors involving the demise of Dempsey’s marriage have been circulating for some time now, before this latest gossip (Update: which was anonymously confirmed by someone apparently in the know in the comments of this post). His wife, Jillian Fink, filed for divorce in January, hiring famed Hollywood divorce attorney Laura Wasser. Now, with this article being pulled, it looks like Dempsey’s throwing his legal weight around as well. Update II: InTouch’s editor, David Perel, told Jezebel that the piece “was never supposed to be posted and went up by mistake,” clarifying that they haven’t been threatened with legal action from Dempsey, but that it’s merely their editorial strategy to hold some magazine stories from online publication.