'Grey's Anatomy' star Ellen Pompeo reveals why she won't ever leave the show
Grey's Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo said she has no intentions of leaving the popular medical drama series since she joined it in 2005.
The actress, who portrays the titular Dr. Meredith Grey, has had less screen time since 2022, because her character rose to the rank of general surgery chief at the fictitious Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital from being an intern at the Seattle Grace Hospital.
But in an interview with Spanish newspaper El País, she said it makes "no sense" for her to leave the show for good.
“That would make no sense, emotionally or financially," the 55-year-old actor is quoted as saying. "The show was streamed more than a billion times in 2024. More than a billion times."
"The companies that own the show and stream the show make a lot of money from our images and our voices and our faces," she added.
Pompeo said if she'd "walk away completely, everybody gets to make money from my hard work for 20 years."
"I wouldn’t make any money,” she added. “To me, it doesn’t make any sense that everybody 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.”
Pompeo's remarks came after headlining the new limited series titled Good American Family, which revolves around a couple that adopted a girl who's perceived to have a rare form of dwarfism but soon arouses suspicions regarding her true identity.
“Well, this is a limited series, so I won’t appear as this character again,” she said. “I was just looking for something that was very different from Meredith Grey, and this offer presented itself.”
Grey's Anatomy deals with the professional and personal lives of five surgical interns and their supervisors. Now on its 21st season, it has over 444 episodes as of April 10.
