Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo has revealed the “most emotional” scene she has filmed during her 19 seasons on the show.
On Wednesday’s episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Pompeo answered host Alex Cooper’s questions about the hit ABC medical drama.
“Tell me the first thing that comes to mind,” Cooper encouraged Pompeo during the segment. “Which scene was the most emotional to film?”
“I think Sandra Oh’s last day was really emotional for me,” the Catch Me If You Can star said. “I can speak for myself. I can’t speak for her, but for me it was really emotional because I really like, she was such a loss because she’s so immensely talented, and I really didn’t think the show could go on without her, and I was OK with that. It literally felt like half of the show just leaving.”
“It felt like a piece was gonna always be missing, and it felt like when obviously anyone from the core left, it felt wrong, but that’s because she was your person and you were her person on the show,” Cooper said.
Pompeo also spoke out on the “brilliance” of Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes.
“There’s been a lot of moments, but all of those feminist moments, right? Cristina Yang talking about abortion on network, prime time television, saying that the woman is the most important relationship in your life, not the man. I mean, you know, she really is a feminist trailblazer in terms of what we see on the screen on prime-time television,” the Massachusetts native said. “She changed the game for sure.”
Pompeo began playing Dr. Meredith Grey on Grey’s Anatomy in 2005. She stepped away from the series as a regular in 2023 and now makes recurring appearances on the show, in addition to being its primary narrator and executive producer.
Camilla Luddington, Pompeo’s costar on Grey’s, recently revealed what she considered to be the “most difficult” scenes to film. During an episode of her Call It What It Is podcast, which she cohosts with Grey’s alum Jessica Capshaw, Luddington shared that it wasn’t easy shooting her character meeting her birth mother.
“The most difficult Jo scene for me to shoot was all the scenes with my mom, just because it had been a long time coming on the show and felt very emotional,” she said in November.
“I prepared for it,” she continued. “What was helpful was I had never worked with the actress (Michelle Forbes) before, so it really did feel like meeting a new person, and kind of like, this sounds so actor-y, listening and responding.
“I just came into it very emotional to begin with because I felt emotional for Jo and then the actress was so great that it was very easy just to see where those scenes took us.”
