'Grey's Anatomy's Sarah Drew: It Wasn't Love At First Sight
Exclusive! Actress Sarah Drew shares that her husband "pursued me with handwritten letters."
Last season on Grey's Anatomy, April Kepner faced a romantic dilemma: Should she choose Dr. Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams) or paramedic Matthew (Jason Bruening)? No surprise here, Sarah Drew tells us that her character's love life—and everyone else's—is likely to remain complicated. "We start where we left off last season," Drew says about the premiere of the show's tenth season on Sept. 26. "There's going to be a lot of pain because there will be a lot of breakups and discord in relationships."
Fortunately for her, fact is more harmonious than fiction. Drew's, 32, madly in love with the two leading men in her life: her husband, college lecturer Peter Lanfer, and their 20-month-old son Micah.
YourTango: Congrats on becoming a mom. How is it going? How are you juggling motherhood and work?
Sarah Drew: What's wonderful about this show is it's such a large ensemble, so I get a lot of time at home with him. I did a movie this summer, a comedy called Moms' Night Out, and I was playing the lead in it so I was in every scene. That was different. It comes out next Mother's Day weekend.
YourTango: What do you love about being a mom?
Sarah Drew: I love the fact that Micah forces me to be present. I have the incredible opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a little tiny person. Having a kid forces you to slow down. Sitting with him, I can watch him and explore the world and be delighted in it. Everything is new. It's a beautiful thing to be in that space.
YourTango: How has his arrival affected your relationship with your husband?
Sarah Drew: It's been amazing. The main thing it has done is brought us together. We're now seeing sides of each other that we've never seen before. My husband is an incredible father. He's an equal partner in every way. It makes me fall in love with my husband more to watch him with our son. We're forced to stay at home because we have him, so we have a date every night. We sit out under the stars and eat our dinner. So it's brought us much closer.
YourTango: What's the best love advice you ever received?
Sarah Drew: The best piece of advice I got was to always be the other person's cheerleader, and to eliminate sarcasm from your relationship completely.
YourTango: How do you keep your relationship solid?
Sarah Drew: You keep the lines of communication open, that's the main thing. The times that we've had a hard time in our marriage have been when I have not been honest about what I'm feeling, and then it builds up and explodes. If you keep it honest and talk about things as they come up, it keeps things on the right track.
YourTango: Was it love at first sight when you met?
Sarah Drew: For him it was. For me, we were leading a camp together and I was very focused on the kids. I had been burned twice by guys, so I was wounded and not interested in guys at all. He pursued me with handwritten letters for like eight months. It was incredibly romantic and old fashioned. I fell in love with him through the letters.
YourTango: Do you still write letters to each other?
Sarah Drew: We do on holidays like Valentine's Day or birthdays. But we should do it more.
YourTango: What would you tell your younger self about love and relationships?
Sarah Drew: It only gets better. Don't get caught up in the need to create a honeymoon moment all the time. The further you grow in the relationship, the deeper it gets; the love morphs into something different but it's so much better than that butterfly period.
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