Karla Souza to Lead 'Grey's Anatomy' West Texas Spinoff at ABC

Karla Souza will star in the lead role of the "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff set in West Texas, Variety has learned. The untitled series marks the third spinoff of the ABC medical drama and Souza's return to the Shondaland fold.

The network originally announced the project in May, targeting a launch during the 2026-2027 broadcast season. That plan has slipped: ABC recently pushed the show to the 2027-2028 season after it failed to receive a California TV tax credit (a state subsidy that offsets production costs for shoots based in California). A paperwork decision now sets the clock back a full year.

Who is Dr. Carolina 'Lina' Hall?

Souza will play Dr. Carolina "Lina" Hall, described in the official logline as "a haunted and cynical doctor who runs a medical center in a small town in West Texas." The series itself is billed as "an edgy drama about a team at a West Texas rural medical center — the last chance for care before miles of nowhere." That logline carries more menace than a medical chart usually allows. Frontier medicine, apparently, still sells.

The casting reunites Souza with ABC and Shondaland. She previously played Laurel Castillo in the Emmy-winning ABC series "How to Get Away With Murder" and starred in the ABC sitcom "Home Economics," which ran for three seasons. Her other credits include:

• "Day Shift" at Netflix
• The series "56 Days"
• The film "La Caida" at Amazon, which won her an International Emmy Award
• The Mexican films "¿Qué culpa tiene el niño?", "Nosotros los Nobles" and "Instructions Not Included"

Souza is repped by Gersh, Untitled, and Gang Tyre.

Who is making the spinoff?

Shonda Rhimes and Meg Marinis co-created the series and serve as executive producers. "Grey's Anatomy" star Ellen Pompeo also executive produces, alongside Betsy Beers. 20th Television and Shondaland produce.

The pedigree is familiar. Rhimes built the "Grey's" universe; Pompeo has steered it from the front since 2005; Beers has been there since the beginning. The spinoff simply extends a franchise that has rarely left ABC's schedule.

How big is the 'Grey's' franchise now?

This becomes the third spinoff of "Grey's Anatomy." The mothership show aside, ABC has aired:

• "Private Practice," which ran for six seasons
• "Station 19," which ran for seven seasons
• The digital series "Grey's Anatomy: B-Team," which streamed on ABC.com in 2018

Few live-action dramas sustain that many offshoots. The West Texas setting, though, pushes the formula away from Seattle's rain and into oil country, trading hospital corridors for what the logline calls "miles of nowhere." A rural medical center with one haunted doctor at the helm is a notable pivot for a franchise built on urban ensemble soap.

The delay to 2027-2028 gives the production time to sort logistics — and gives viewers two more years of the original, which continues to anchor ABC's drama slate. Whether Dr. Hall's small-town clinic can match the longevity of "Station 19's" seven seasons is a question the Texas desert won't answer until the decade's end.