T.R. Knight Was ‘Scared’ to Film Meredith and George’s ‘Humiliating’ Grey’s Anatomy S/ e/ x Scene (Exclusive)

Like Ellen Pompeo, T.R. Knight was similarly appalled at the “humiliating” s e/ x scene between the stars’ Grey’s Anatomy characters.

Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE ahead of the opening night for Stranger Things: The First Shadow on Broadway, Knight shared his own memories from the awkward s e/ x scene between George and Meredith. Pompeo recently shared on Call Her Daddy that both she and Knight cried while filming the scene — and neither of them wanted to go through with it.

“You can’t really find a more humiliating experience for both characters,” Knight, 52, says.

The scene, which takes place in season 2 of Grey’s Anatomy, sees Meredith in a particularly low place after she and Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) split and she has a complicated encounter with her estranged father. George decides to confess his long-held feelings for Meredith amid her emotional turmoil, leading to a s e/ x scene that ends when Meredith bursts into tears.

“We were both just really scared for what was going to happen. It’s like, what are our characters doing here? What are they doing? You can’t help but feel like this is not going to go well,” Knight says. “How are [George and Meredith] going to survive this?”

Knight confirms to PEOPLE that the pair had to film the scene twice because there was “too much thrusting” in the first take, a fact Pompeo mentioned in her interview, too. He also notes he doesn’t “remember me crying,” though says, “[Ellen’s] memory is, I’m sure, better than mine.”

“I remember it being such a humiliating [scene], and then we had to go through it again to re-tape it. And then that was also like reliving it again,” Knight continues.

On Call Her Daddy, Pompeo, 55, revealed she’d “never watched that scene,” and all of the tears Meredith cries while in bed with George are real, reflecting just how little she wanted to film that scene (twice).

“I think it’s just natural that you want to look out for the character that you’re playing. They actually have a name for it, character advocacy,” Knight says. ”You see them heading down the dark road on a rainy night with no brakes and in a car, and you’re worried for them … Things couldn’t help but change after that. They do change after that.”

Though the scene was one that both Knight and Pompeo were reluctant to go through with, knowing it would cause irreparable damage to their characters’ relationship, he also praised the show’s creator, Shonda Rhimes

, for navigating the often messy choices people make.

“Let’s face it, we all make huge mistakes in life,” Knight says. “I think that’s the core of it — it’s recreating in these characters these terrible mistakes that we make in life, and we have to go on and we have to figure it out. And we are not always at our best, and we’re not always at our ideal. And I think that is something that’s a real, beautiful skill of Shonda’s and the writers, to create that thing where, where even the actors playing it are like, ‘No, we can’t do this.’ ”

“But they are. They’re going to have this terrible, terrible s e/ x that is going to that’s going to haunt them for the rest of their — well, George’s short life, unfortunately,” he adds.