Grey's Anatomy's Caterina Scorsone on What That Pregnancy Test Means for Amelia and Owen

On last week's episode of Grey's Anatomy, Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) and Owen (Kevin McKidd) were devastated to find out that she wasn't pregnant. Or, at least Owen was devastated. Amelia, truth be told, seemed thankful when the test came back negative -- even though she had spent most of the day spreading the good, if unconfirmed, news to her colleagues.

"That's as much of a shock to her as it would be to anyone else," Scorsone tells TVGuide.com about Amelia's nearly audible sigh of relief at the end of the episode. "She's getting more and more rattled as the episode goes on, and by the end I think she is shocked, and terrified, by how terrified she realizes she is about being pregnant again."

TVGuide.com chatted with Scorsone about what lies ahead for Amelia and Owen. Keep reading to find out whether Amelia will ever come clean to Owen about her past, and why she's questioning if she's emotionally ready to have another child.

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Last week, Amelia was so excited to tell everyone about her "pregnancy," except for Owen. Why was that?
Caterina Scorsone: Amelia is very much in love with Owen, and she very much wants to have a life with him that is full of love and children and everything that he's been talking about wanting. She earnestly wants that. She wants to give him everything that he wants. She also had a really bustling, loving, big family when she was growing up, until her father was killed and it got really sad and traumatic for them. I do think that she very earnestly, very genuinely wants to recreate some of that with Owen. When she suddenly thought she might be pregnant, I think she was anticipating feeling all of these excited feelings about getting exactly what she's been talking about and wanting. She is bewildered throughout the course of that episode by how much her emotional reaction is not matching up with her plan. Every time she tells somebody, she thinks she's supposed to feel this certain way, and it's not how she's feeling. And she's getting more and more freaked out and more and more scared. And actually telling Owen, the expectations are so high. She wants it to be this amazing, wonderful, happy, sepia-toned photograph and her emotional reaction, her traumatic reaction to what happened with her last baby is kind of seeping into this present-time experience.

Is Amelia ready to have another child?
Scorsone: Well, I think it's complex. I think she would like to be ready. I think that in terms of her life and her career and her conscious desires, she is absolutely ready. She's been parenting Meredith's kids with her. ... That's one of the reasons she came to LA. She's great with kids. She loves kids. She is a fantastic surgeon. ... She'd be a great mom in a lot of ways. It's just that the trauma that she's been through over and over again in her life, culminating in the death of her first child, is overwhelming her nervous system at this point. So, although she consciously wants it, her unconscious is in a pretty ferocious battle with her conscious.

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There are a lot of things that Amelia and Owen don't know about each other, and some of those things, viewers are aware of even though Amelia and Owen aren't. Will Amelia ever come clean to Owen about her past?
Scorsone: Basically, what she's told Owen is what the people who only watched Grey's Anatomy ... who didn't watch Private Practice know. So, yes, there's this whole other aspect that's related to what she told Owen a couple weeks ago, about Ryan, the baby's father, and that period in her life when she was using Oxy, and she was in a really dark place. All those traumatic events are kind of in a cluster in her psyche and her emotional life.

I think she's been hesitant to tell him for two reasons. One, she knows how much he wants to have this picture-perfect family and she wants desperately to give him that. She really, really does. She doesn't want him to be disappointed in any aspect of her. She wants him to think that she's this wonderful, perfect person. Of course she wants to be on a pedestal in his eyes, and is terrified that he won't think of her that way anymore. At the same time, I think the other aspect is not just about him. It's about her own fear about confronting the pain that the death of the baby caused for her. I think she has been avoiding dealing with that pain to a large extent ever since she left Los Angeles. She packed it away and has kind of tried to move on past it without ever really dealing with it.

Do we see her turn to anyone besides Owen for support in this week's episode?
Scorsone: She has a really surprising encounter with Alex Karev, [with whom she] doesn't have too much of a relationship. They know each other. They're friends. But they have a really interesting encounter in this episode, where I think she realizes that she does feel safe with him in a way that is rare. I think she sees him as maybe, in some ways, more of a kindred spirit than a lot of the people she likes and loves in the hospital. He's got some pretty heavy demons, and so does she. They're both experienced with being on the outside and on the periphery, and they both have a lot of pain. There's something about that that she finds safe.

Grey's Anatomy airs Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC.