'Grey's Anatomy' season 13 cast news: Jesse Williams won't get fired over BET Awards speech, Shonda Rhimes says

"Grey's Anatomy" creator Shonda Rhimes had a curt response for those seeking to get Jesse Williams kicked off her long-running ABC medical drama.

"Um, people? Boo don't need a petition," Rhimes tweeted on Monday, July 4, addressing the ongoing backlash against Williams' provocative acceptance speech at this year's BET Awards.

The "Grey's Anatomy" star found himself the subject of a Change.org petition following the stirring and politically charged speech he made while accepting a humanitarian honor at the BET Awards in June.

The actor, who has starred as Dr. Jackson Avery in "Grey's Anatomy" for the last seven seasons, is also a civil rights activist. He recently produced the documentary "Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement." At the BET Awards, Williams earned a standing ovation for his heartfelt speech about social justice and cultural appropriation.

However, not everyone appreciated the actor's headline-making speech. One of them, a woman named Erin Smith, put up an online petition calling for the "Grey's Anatomy" cast member to be fired from the show and for viewers to boycott ABC over what she called the actor's "racist rant."

In the petition, which has collected more than 23,000 signatures as of this writing, Williams is accused of "racist hate speech" against police and white people.

"If this was a white person making the same speech about an African American, they would have been fired and globally chastised, as they should be, but there has been no consequences to Williams' actions," Smith wrote in the petition.

On Wednesday, July 6, Williams responded to the petition, saying that none of it makes sense.

"Because you keep incessantly promoting their cowardly intolerance!" he wrote on Twitter. "Not a single sane sentence in their claim. Not One."

But while there are those who found Williams' speech offensive, there are also many who praised his call to action and work for the Black Lives Matter movement. Another Change.org petition, which asks "Grey's Anatomy" to keep the actor on, calls Williams' speech "powerful and poignant" and calls him a "national treasure."

"Grey's Anatomy" season 13 debuts on Sept. 22 on ABC.