Staff
“The network said there was too much thrusting. In your worst nightmare to have to do it one time, we had to reshoot that s–t,” the actress recalled, while also opening up about fighting for equal pay and her decision to leave the show.
Ellen Pompeo is looking back at shooting a Grey’s Anatomy scene that made her so “uncomfortable” it left her in tears.
On Wednesday’s episode of Call Her Daddy, the actress — who, of course, stars as the titular character Dr. Meredith Grey in the medical drama — recalled filming an intimate scene with her former costar and friend, T.R. Knight, who starred as George O’Malley, back in Season 2.
According to Pompeo, 55, shooting the scene was “so bad” and “awkward,” both she and Knight “cried.”
Getty / ABC
Katherine Heigl Debunks Rumor She ‘Turned Down’ Emmy Nomination While on Grey’s Anatomy
View Story
“T.R. and I are such good friends, and we had to do a love scene, and we were both crying,” she told Call Her Daddy host, Alex Cooper. “We cried. We cried. And the scene was so uncomfortable and awkward. He didn’t want to do that, I didn’t want to do it. When we filmed it, it was so bad. And then the network said there was too much thrusting.”
“In your worst nightmare to have to do it one time, we had to reshoot that s–t … and do it twice,” she continued.
To this day, Pompeo said she still hasn’t watched the scene.
“I’ve never watched that scene,” she said. “I’ve never seen it. I don’t know how it was shot or covered or … how it was edited. But I’m full-on in tears the whole entire scene and those are real tears.”
“There was a lot of stuff that I didn’t want to do at the time,” she admitted.
Meanwhile, also during the wide-ranging interview, Pompeo opened up about fighting for equal pay on Grey’s Anatomy after it was revealed that her costar, Patrick Dempsey, was being paid significantly more than her. Following her fight, she became the highest-paid actress in a primetime drama in 2018, earning $20 a million a season, which became public at the time.
“To be completely fair, the television game was so different then. He had done 13 pilots before me,” Pompeo told Cooper. “… Nothing personal to him, just in general, only a man can have 13 failed TV pilots, and their quote keeps going up, right? But in all fairness, his quote was what it was. He was a bigger star than I was at that point. No one knew who I was. Everybody knew who he was, so he did deserve that money. I’m not saying he didn’t deserve that money. It’s just, being that I was the namesake of the show, I deserved the same and that was harder to get.”
“I wasn’t salty about him getting what he got,” she continued. “I was salty that they didn’t value me as much as they valued him, and they never will.”
“Once you get to a certain level, you can advocate, you know, for other women on your platform or in your job, in your workplace,” Pompeo added, stressing the bigger picture. “If you know, you know that you are getting this much and all the other women are well beneath you, you can’t just be okay with that. You can’t just be like, ‘Yes, I’m winning. Cool, let’s go.’ No. You really do have a responsibility to look and see what everybody else is making and use your power to say, ‘Listen, I appreciate what I got. This is amazing, but I happen to notice this and I really think that all the women deserve a bump.'”
Call Her Daddy
The Golden Globe nominee recalled how she spoke to former showrunner and creator Shonda Rhimes to let her know she was going to be advocating for herself for a higher paycheck, sharing that she ultimately got her “blessing.”
“I said to her, ‘I’m gonna go in and ask for this much. Are you cool with that?’ Just because I don’t wanna be disrespectful to her, I don’t wanna come off crazy, and I want to let her know what moves I’m making because I do respect her, I am grateful to her,” Pompeo said. “And I do want to make sure I’m moving in the right way, right? And she was like, ‘Yeah, no one’s going to give it to you, you have to ask for it.’ And so once I got her blessing to go ahead and do what I wanted to do, then I said to my team, ‘I’m okay with that.’ And, you know, necessarily the business people might say, ‘You don’t need to ask her permission. You don’t need to do that.’ And then I say, ‘Yeah, but I want to.’ Because truth is, I wouldn’t be here without her.”
“Being raised in a mafia culture, I always want to pay respect to the people that deserve respect,” she continued, before going on to share how she used the “data” that showed the drama’s impact to “back up” her argument. “I see exactly how much Grey’s Anatomy makes for ABC/Disney. I get to see the number. It’s my face, it’s my voice. I’ve done so much work promoting the show all over the world for the past 20 years. I am the Disney princess of that franchise.”
Grey’s Anatomy premiered in March 2005. Pompeo went on to star in 400 episodes, before the show bid farewell to her character in the Season 19 winter premiere, which aired in February 2023. While Pompeo’s Grey is still a supporting character and she remains a producer on the series, the episode marked her last appearance in a leading capacity.
During her appearance on Call Her Daddy, Pompeo reflected on her decision to leave the ABC drama.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do. I just knew that I really couldn’t do Grey’s anymore,” she said. “It was to the point where I really just felt like an animal at the zoo. I’m a big believer in destiny. I thought, if there’s something else I’m meant to do, it’s gonna find me. But I know I have to leave this.”
Pompeo’s new series, The Good American Family, is streaming now on Hulu.
