After the exchange, Vernoff and her team extended an invite to the broadcast standards and practices executive to be part of the wall of women who came together to protect and honor Abby—and she came.

"From the moment the script was published, there was a big reaction to it at Shondaland. Everybody was blown away. We started having people come up and ask if they could be in that scene," Vernoff told EW. "The women in that hallway are almost all the women on the writing staff. Many of the women are on the crew, or they are assistants at Shondaland, or they are women who work at ABC. I think there were more than 100 women."