It’s inconceivable to think about Grey’s Anatomy with out its title character, Meredith Gray. However happily for followers, they seemingly received’t ever have to confront such a situation. As star Ellen Pompeo, who performs Meredith, defined on Jemele Hill’s podcast, she has stayed with the long-running collection for private causes, together with monetary stability.
“, I made selections to keep on the present. For me, personally, a wholesome house life was extra necessary than profession,” Pompeo stated. “I didn’t develop up with a notably pleased childhood. So to have a pleased house life was actually one thing I wanted to full, to shut the outlet in my coronary heart.” (Pompeo has three youngsters together with her husband, Chris Ivery.)
She added, “And so I made a determination to earn a living, and never chase inventive performing roles. That’s what, in the end, I believe, the hustler in me—I do not like chasing something, ever. And performing to me, in my expertise, was a lot of chasing. You have received to chase roles, you’ve received to beg for roles, you’ve received to persuade folks. And though I produce and it’s the identical type of factor, I believe I nonetheless do it from a place of, I’m by no means that thirsty as a result of I’m financially set.”
Pompeo has been vocal for years about her combat to obtain pay fairness on the ABC collection, notably with regard to the discrepancy between her wage and that of her former co-star Patrick Dempsey. In 2018, she stated Dempsey had refused to negotiate alongside her for equal pay. “There have been many occasions the place I reached out about becoming a member of collectively to negotiate, however he was by no means focused on that,” she wrote in a first-person piece revealed by The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “At one level, I requested for $5,000 greater than him simply on precept, as a result of the present is Grey’s Anatomy and I’m Meredith Gray. They wouldn’t give it to me. And I may have walked away, so why didn’t I? It’s my present; I’m the primary. I’m certain I felt what a lot of those different actresses really feel: why ought to I stroll away from a nice half due to a man? You’re feeling conflicted however then you definately determine, ‘I’m not going to let a man drive me out of my very own home.’”
Dempsey left Grey’s Anatomy in 2015. Pompeo would signal a deal in 2017 that made her the highest-paid drama actress on tv, incomes shut to $20 million per yr.
About her determination to keep on the collection and combat for what she deserved, Pompeo informed Hill, “I’m saying to myself, ‘Wait a second, that is my face.’ Sure, different folks created the present. Shonda Rhimes created the present, and we’d be nowhere with out that. The studio made the present and put the present on the air. I’m not saying folks don’t deserve what they’ve. I’m simply saying, why ought to all these folks make lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} off of this, which I’m the face of, and I not get rich too from it? So I simply thought it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to stroll away.”
Earlier than Grey’s Anatomy premiered in 2005, Pompeo had appeared in a variety of initiatives, maybe most notably in supporting roles in 2002’s Moonlight Mile and 2003’s Outdated Faculty. However, as Pompeo informed Hill, she was into her 30s when she began on the medical drama. “I received within the recreation late, Jemele,” she stated. “I didn’t begin Grey’s till I used to be 33, after which I began having children at 40. If I began the present after I was youthful, 25, I most likely would have dipped out after I was 31, 32, when my six-year contract was up. However my age had a lot to do with it.”