Ellen Pompeo was the face of Grey’s Anatomy from 2005 until she stepped back from the beloved ABC series in Season 19. Today, she still narrates the show as Dr. Meredith Grey and appears in a limited capacity while serving as an executive producer.
The medical drama will kick off Season 22 this fall and the actress, 55, still has no plans to exit the series created by Shonda Rhimes. So, why has Pompeo stuck around for so long? The mom of three opened up about her longevity on Grey’s Anatomy during a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“On Grey’s, you really only get an opportunity to be nominated for things in your first few seasons, and so that time had clearly passed,” she told the publication in an article published on June 18. “I didn’t crave that kind of recognition. I craved the sort of financial and job security situation more that I did critical accolades — that’s why I stayed on the show.”
The actress echoed these sentiments in April when she told El País it would “make no sense, emotionally or financially” for her to depart Grey’s Anatomy. “The show was streamed more than a billion times in 2024. More than a billion times.”
Anne Marie Fox/ABC
During her sit-down with THR, Pompeo further explained her motivation to remain on the show.
“Had I been [chasing] critical acclaim, I wouldn’t have stayed on Grey’s for so long,” she shared. “So it wasn’t always the most important thing to me but now that I’m doing something new, it would definitely, probably help me in this next chapter of my story — moving on from Grey’s, doing other roles.”
In March, Good American Family premiered on Hulu, and Grey’s Anatomy fans got to see Pompeo in a whole new light as Kristine Barnett, Natalia Grace‘s former adoptive mother, in the limited-series drama.
The show is based on the real-life story of Grace, who lives with dwarfism, after the Barnetts claimed she was an adult posing as a child and had her age legally changed. In reality, Grace was determined to be 8 in 2010.
Grey’s Anatomy, streaming on Hulu