It’s impossible to imagine Grey’s Anatomy without its title character, Meredith Grey. But fortunately for fans, they likely won’t ever have to confront such a scenario. As star Ellen Pompeo, who plays Meredith, explained on Jemele Hill’s podcast, she has stayed with the long-running series for personal reasons, including financial stability.
“You know, I made choices to stay on the show. For me, personally, a healthy home life was more important than career,” Pompeo said. “I didn’t grow up with a particularly happy childhood. So to have a happy home life was really something I needed to complete, to close the hole in my heart.” (Pompeo has three children with her husband, Chris Ivery.)
She added, “And so I made a decision to make money, and not chase creative acting roles. That’s what, ultimately, I think, the hustler in me—I don't like chasing anything, ever. And acting to me, in my experience, was a lot of chasing. You've got to chase roles, you’ve got to beg for roles, you’ve got to convince people. And although I produce and it’s the same kind of thing, I think I still do it from a place of, I’m never that thirsty because I’m financially set.”
Pompeo has been vocal for years about her fight to receive pay equity on the ABC series, particularly with regard to the discrepancy between her salary and that of her former co-star Patrick Dempsey. In 2018, she said Dempsey had refused to negotiate alongside her for equal pay. “There were many times where I reached out about joining together to negotiate, but he was never interested in that,” she wrote in a first-person piece published by The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “At one point, I asked for $5,000 more than him just on principle, because the show is Grey’s Anatomy and I’m Meredith Grey. They wouldn’t give it to me. And I could have walked away, so why didn’t I? It’s my show; I’m the number one. I’m sure I felt what a lot of these other actresses feel: why should I walk away from a great part because of a guy? You feel conflicted but then you figure, ‘I’m not going to let a guy drive me out of my own house.’”
Dempsey left Grey’s Anatomy in 2015. Pompeo would sign a deal in 2017 that made her the highest-paid drama actress on television, earning close to $20 million per year.
About her decision to stay on the series and fight for what she deserved, Pompeo told Hill, “I’m saying to myself, ‘Wait a second, this is my face.’ Yes, other people created the show. Shonda Rhimes created the show, and we’d be nowhere without that. The studio made the show and put the show on the air. I’m not saying people don’t deserve what they have. I’m just saying, why should all these people make hundreds of millions of dollars off of this, which I’m the face of, and I not get wealthy too from it? So I just thought it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to walk away.”
Before Grey’s Anatomy premiered in 2005, Pompeo had appeared in a number of projects, perhaps most notably in supporting roles in 2002’s Moonlight Mile and 2003’s Old School. But, as Pompeo told Hill, she was into her 30s when she started on the medical drama. “I got in the game late, Jemele,” she said. “I didn’t start Grey’s until I was 33, and then I started having kids at 40. If I started the show when I was younger, 25, I probably would have dipped out when I was 31, 32, when my six-year contract was up. But my age had a lot to do with it.”
She added, “I knew coming up on 40, it’s like, I don’t want to be out there chasing things, running after things, begging. I’d rather just see this as the blessing that it is. It’s pretty common for actors to try to run away from stuff. They’re super well-known for something, and they have to get as far away from it as possible. That’s okay, I understand that completely, completely understand that. But at my age and where my life is, I’m not trying to run away from anything. It is who I am. I made my choices and I’m cool with it.”
Pompeo said she still has a passion for Grey’s Anatomy because it affords her a platform to discuss systemic racism in the healthcare industry. “This is something that has plagued us forever. And I think the show has given me a real window into that,” she said. “That’s a platform I’m very passionate about, and I’m going to continue down that path and try to do more work in that arena. So Grey’s has been a gift.”
Pompeo has been radically honest about her career for years. In 2016, she told People, “My decision to stay on Grey’s was based solely on age. At 33, I was wise enough to know my clock was already ticking in Hollywood.”
Last year, in an interview with Taraji P. Henson, Pompeo also discussed how Grey’s Anatomy has given her broad financial flexibility. “At 40 years old, where am I ever going to get this kind of money? I need to take care of my kids,” she said, before detailing some of the backstage drama that plagued Grey’s Anatomy over its first 10 seasons.
“My mission became, this can’t be fantastic to the public and a disaster behind the scenes. Shonda Rhimes and I decided to rewrite the ending of this story,” she said. “That’s what’s kept me. Patrick Dempsey left the show in Season 11, and the studio and network believed the show could not go on without the male lead. So I had a mission to prove that it could. I was on a double mission.”
During that same interview, Pompeo praised Rhimes for helping turn the show’s culture around. “I’ve hit some marks that have made me feel accomplished in a different way,” Pompeo said. “Shonda Rhimes has been amazing. She lets us be mothers. I don’t have to travel. I don’t have to go anywhere.”
As for the show itself, will return at some point for its 17th season once the coronavirus pandemic allows for production to resume, Pompeo was clear-eyed about her own performance. “I haven’t been challenged creatively at all,” she told Henson. “Every once in a while, we do an amazing storyline. But for the last five years, I’ve had other milestones that we were trying to achieve behind the camera.”
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