In the past year, the gray-eyed hunk has been promoted to series regular on Grey's Anatomy, tackled horror in the upcoming Joss Whedon flick The Cabin in the Woods, hit the stage in Colonial Williamsburg, Va., as a guest artist-in-residence, shot a send-up of Dirty Dancing for FunnyOrDie.com and written a piece about traveling and history for The Huffington Post.
Add to this his former careers as a model and a high school history teacher, and it seems as if there is nothing Williams, 29, can't do.
Well, besides accept his status as a sex symbol.
"It is weird, period," he says with a laugh, perched at a high-top table inside the faux Emerald City Bar on the Grey's Anatomy set. "It's better than people not caring, I guess."
A few feet away, co-stars Justin Chambers and Chyler Leigh catch wind of the interview, adding a new layer of embarrassment for the laid-back actor.
"Fans," he cracks as he shifts to turn his back to his hecklers. Leigh giggles at Williams' shyness, prompting him to joke, "She's a little creepy."
Williams is just as handsome as expected in person but with a surprising sheen of intensity that comes from wanting to do his character, Dr. Jackson Avery, justice — even if it means going shirtless sometimes.
"I'm here to try to grow as an actor and develop a real character that's complete and (whom) the audience gives a damn about. I think the shirtless stuff is entertaining. My first break was Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, so I'm used to that. ... As long I can do more than that and leave something behind that is substantive, then I'm OK with that."
In tonight's episode (9 ET/PT), Avery doffs his scrubs shirt in an attempt to woo Dr. Teddy Altman (Kim Raver). But Williams doesn't seem interested in his character's love life.
"I don't really care about the romance because there's so many other things I can be doing medically and socially," he says. "But I can be sure that something's going to happen pretty soon, romantically and competitively. I know that Shonda (Rhimes, show creator and executive producer) and all of them know what they're doing, and they know how to keep some suspense and then have a rollout."
The Grey's doctors are still trying to move past the trauma of the hospital shooting that left two of Avery's friends dead in the Season 6 finale.
"People are redefining relationships, reconsidering their careers. They watched people (get) shot and killed, and we have to go work in those same hallways again. We work getting bloody and putting people's lives in our hands again."
When not channeling his inner surgeon, the Chicago native and longtime New Yorker enjoys football, Mexican food and his new life in California.
"Coming from New York, you're kind of indoctrinated with anti-L.A. sentiment, but California is just a really dope state," he says. "You have to find your group of folks, and oddly enough, a lot of my group in New York were from California and a lot of my friends (here) are from New York."
One of the Cali people he met in New York was real estate broker Aryn Drake-Lee. He'll marry her next year.
"I was a teacher when I met her, so she's been with me through all different facets of my career. She's stuck with me through thick and thick and thick and thin," he says with a laugh. "We know each other in and out, and she was very happy to move out here. She loves California and was tired of the weather on the East Coast."
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