Twenty years have passed since Ellen Pompeo, 55, played any role besides Meredith Grey. Before 2005, when the series Grey’s Anatomy debuted, her career had been comprised of a chain of lusterless secondary roles. But since she became the protagonist of one of the most popular and long-lasting medical dramas on TV, her professional life has been exclusively linked to Grey. No films, no other roles on television, with very few brief exceptions. Although the young Pompeo dreamed of being a movie star, she had to abandon that hope: being the star of a 400-plus-episode series (which was just renewed for its 22nd season) left her with little free time.
In 2022, the woman who had become the best-paid actress on television decided the moment had arrived to take a step back and renegotiate her contract to reduce the number of episodes on which she appeared down to just a handful a season. However, she would continue to be the narrator and executive producer of the series. “I’ve been doing it for 20 years, so it was time to step away. I have three children and I love spending time with them and I love being involved in their lives. I’m very lucky to be able to get to work sometimes and take time off. I have a nice balance in my life,” Pompeo tells EL PAÍS in an interview by videocall at the end of March.
She’s smiling, in a black jacket, white shirt and black tie. She speaks slowly, thinks hard about her responses. The reason for the interview is her first role since she took that step back from Grey’s Anatomy: she is the lead as well as the main attraction of a drama based on real-life events, A Good American Family (which premiered on March 19 on Hulu). She laughs when asked why she chose another series to be her first job after Grey’s. Hasn’t she had enough television in her life? “Well, this is a limited series, so I won’t appear as this character again. I was just looking for something that was very different from Meredith Grey, and this offer presented itself,” she says.
A Good American Family tells the true story of Natalia Grace, a young girl with a rare form of dwarfism who in 2010, was adopted by the Barnetts, a couple with three biological children. In 2012, and after several disconcerting episodes that included knives, electric fences and signs that the girl’s age was different from that which was on her record, the Barnetts requested to have her legally recognized as an adult, and left her to live in an apartment by herself. Then came a long legal battle and the media’s adoption of the case, which even became the subject of a docuseries. Pompeo’s eight-episode series tells the different versions of events as viewed by those involved.
Pompeo saw in this project, of which she is also executive producer, an opportunity to explore the way we base our opinions of others solely on what we hear or what they tell us, and looked to tell the story from all possible angles. She plays Kristine Barnett, Natalia’s adoptive mother, who goes from being an apparent victim in the first episodes to becoming the villain when the story’s perspective changes sides. “I see very often villains seeing themselves as victims. Some of the worst people who behave in the worst ways are always projecting themselves as victims in the world. That was something that I could really connect to, because I recognize that in a lot of people,” Pompeo says.
The actress spent a lot of time preparing for the role, and approached the mother as a fictional character, rather than thinking about the real-life woman. “Nobody really knows what happened except the people who were there, and even those people all have completely different versions of what happened. And that’s really the interesting thing about this story, is that no one sees it the same way. I worked with a dialect coach, an acting coach, the hair and makeup team, a wardrobe stylist, I built all the aspects of this character and where she was from, that she was very religious and could recite things from the Bible,” she says. The 2023 Hollywood screenwriters’ and actors’ strikes allowed her time to dive into the documentation of the case, police affidavits and depositions.
There was a reason for this thorough preparation: she felt that the character was a test. “People have been watching me in the same role for 20 years. I’ve been playing the same role for 20 years. I had no reason to believe that I could do anything else. I hadn’t tested myself in 20 years and I can’t expect my audience to believe me as anything else. If I’m going to ask them to watch me as a new character, then I’d better deliver on all fronts,” she says. “It was at the same time thrilling and terrifying.”
Pompeo didn’t become the best-paid actress on television by chance. She got there by fighting for it. For years, she was paid less than her co-star on Grey’s Anatomy, Patrick Dempsey. In 2018, the actress gave a detailed interview about how it took years for her to get a salary equal to that of her co-worker. Today, when she’s referred to as an example of women’s empowerment in show business, she brushes it off, saying that there’s still a long way to go. “I think that it takes all of us women standing up for each other and supporting one another. I’ve had so many women be so kind to me and supportive of me, and I have tried to do the same for other women. I don’t think I alone have done anything, I’m part of a group of extraordinarily talented women in Hollywood, and collectively, we have to come together to learn to use our voices more,” she says.
In the same way that she had the courage to stand up in the front offices to claim what was hers — and to later tell the story — she now has no problem in acknowledging why she doesn’t want to leave Grey’s Anatomy completely: “That would make no sense, emotionally or financially. The show was streamed more than a billion times in 2024. More than a billion times,” she repeats. “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.”
Now, Pompeo is facing the future with an open mind. She’s in no rush and isn’t searching for any specific roles. She will look for characters as different as possible from Grey. She’s also sure that she won’t do any more broadcast television, where seasons run for 20 or 22 episodes. “But we don’t make many of those shows anymore,” she says. At 55 years old, she seems ready to face any challenge, and doesn’t believe that older actresses have difficulties in finding interesting characters. To the contrary, “When you’re really young in Hollywood, you’re hired for your talent, but also for your beauty. They’re not hiring you for your beauty at 50 years old, they’re hiring you for your complexity and your talent alone. Certainly, women are more complex and interesting as they get older, and so are the roles.” So says Ellen Pompeo.
