Ellen Pompeois not letting Dr. Meredith Grey go anytime soon. Though the actress’s last full-time appearance onGrey’s Anatomywasback in 2022, she has not stopped narrating or executive producing the series which made her a household name. And in a new interview, Pompeo revealed that she has no plans to ever cut ties with the show completely. That just wouldn’t make sense to her, on any level.
In a new interview withEl País, the second-most circulated daily newspaper in Spain, Pompeo put it plainly, stating that it “would make no sense, emotionally or financially” to leave the medical drama for good. “The show was streamed more than a billion times in 2024. More than a billion times,” she emphasized. So, yeah: wouldyouleave a paycheck that good, for good? In 2025?! (We certainly wouldn’t.)
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Star Addresses Controversial Gender Pay Gap With Her Male Co-Star
Ellen Pompeo believes she deserved much more than what she got.
She went on to explain her reasoning thusly:
“The companies that own the show and stream the show make a lot of money from our images and our voices and our faces. If I were to walk away completely, everybody gets to make money from my hard work for 20 years and I wouldn’t make any money. To me, it doesn’t make any sense that everybody [else] gets to profit off of my hard work. And emotionally, the show means a lot to people. I want to have an attitude of gratitude toward the show.”
Ellen Pompeo Is Trying Something New With ‘Good American Family’
All of this discussion aroundGrey’s Anatomyis actually in the service of promoting Pompeo’s latest acting project, the Hulu miniseriesGood American Family, based onthe now-infamous true story of Natalia Grace. Natalia Grace — for those who may not know — was a young Ukrainian orphan with a rare form of dwarfism who was adopted by an Indiana couple. That couple later abandoned her, going so far as to accuse her of being a full-grown woman rather than a seven-year-old child, getting the court to see her as such, and setting her up in an apartment to live by herself. Pompeo plays Kristine Barnett, who — alongside her husband Michael (Mark Duplass) — adopted Natalia Grace in 2010 and later abandoned her when the rest of the family moved to Canada. They claimed she exhibited “sociopathic tendencies” and even successfully petitioned the court to change her birth date from 2003 to 1989.
If you want to know the rest of the story, we’d highly encourage you to read up on it, watch the documentary, or Pompeo’s new miniseries. It’s a tale so shocking it deserves more of your time than just reading this little synopsis, especially if you’ve gotten this far already.
Grey’s Anatomy
