Ellen Pompeo had a good experience as Dr. Meredith Gray at ABC Grey’s Anatomy. But the 51-year-old actress says it has yet to be determined whether the oldest prime-time medical drama on TV will continue beyond its 17th season, which opens next month.
“Honestly, we haven’t decided. We are really trying to find that out now,” Pompeo said in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning. “It is the story we tell. To end such an iconic show, how do we do that? I just want to make sure we do this character and this show and the fans [justice]… I want to make sure that we do everything right. “
Pompeo also spoke about his challenging childhood in the working-class town of Everett, just outside Boston. She says her youth was largely shaped by her mother’s death.
“I was very sad as a child,” said Pompeo. “My sisters or my family may have other impressions of me, but I definitely had a very sad childhood because I lost my mother when I was 4. It shapes her whole existence, I think.”
Her mother’s death was the motivation for Pompeo to leave and make her own way in a place that would not consume her with sadness.
“I think it probably made me want to leave. That place represented sadness for me, so I thought maybe anywhere, but there would be better,” explained Pompeo, who now has three children with husband Chris Ivery, whom she married in 2007. “Luckily for me, I found a way to monetize all my emotions.”
But the journey to stardom was not an easy one. As a struggling actor starting out, Pompeo was cut from “a lot of films” and originally assumed the role of Dr. Meredith Gray, a surgical intern, in the Grey’s Anatomy pilot because she needed the money.
“So, I got to the point where I needed money, so I did the Gray ‘ pilot. I said, ‘I don’t want to be stuck in a medical program for six years. I don’t think I will be happy. I think I’ll be bored ‘, ”she recalled. But she followed her agent’s advice to accept the job, which he assumed would last “only a month or six weeks at most, and those things never will.”
But that’s how it happened, and 17 years later, Pompeo earns about $ 20 million a year for his work on the program. Still, this financial privilege did not come easily. Pompeo had to prove to the chain that she deserved her heavy salary.
“I had a very specific number that I can see that Grey’s Anatomy generated. I can see exactly how much that show makes for one of the biggest corporations in the world, “she explained.
Although the world can always identify her as Dr. Meredith Gray, the actress says she refuses to limit herself to her most famous role.
“I looked at myself like I was in a box when I was 35. Now I’m 50 and I would never look at myself like that,” said Pompeo. “With age comes wisdom. Now I see how I can do anything I want, or do nothing.”
Of course, it is unlikely that she is doing anything. On Saturday, the day before the 2021 Golden Globe, she posted an open letter on Instagram to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and “White Hollywood” calling attention to the organization’s lack of diversity. In a recent Los Angeles Times article, it was revealed that HFPA has no black members among its 87 journalists.
“I would like to ask all my white colleagues in this industry, an industry that we love and that has given us an enormous privilege … to appear, appear and solve this problem,” wrote Pompeo. “We are going to show our black colleagues that we care and we are willing to do the job to correct the mistakes that we have created. Now is not the time to be silent. We have a real action item here, let’s do that. “
Pompeo was not alone in his criticisms of HFPA. Sterling K. Brown, Kerry Washington, Jurnee Smollett, Amy Schumer and Dakota Johnson shared a Time’s Up post calling for HFPA, Deadline reported.
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