Ellen Pompeo wants to make it clear, yet again, that her new $20 million salary on “Grey’s Anatomy” had nothing to do with the recently announced exits of co-stars Jessica Capshaw and Sarah Drew.
Ellen DeGeneres gave Pompeo the floor to address that on Thursday’s episode of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”
“It’s absolutely not true,” Pompeo said. “I mean, I’m not involved in these kind of decisions. However, there’s a few problems that you encounter doing a show for 14 seasons. And one of them is the writers have a really hard time creatively, you know, thinking up new stories for all these characters. I think we have 16 regular cast members and it’s always sad when we lose people for whatever reason, whether they want to go or they don’t wanna go, it doesn’t make it any easier.”
DeGeneres added that she had wanted to give Pompeo a chance to shut down the rumors her pay raise led to Drew and Capshaw’s exit, if that was not the case.
“I appreciate you doing that, thank you,” Pompeo said. “I think that it’s important for us to not pit women against each other and to really dispel the notion that women are always victims, you know? You don’t have to pit us against each other. we’re not enemies. we do lift each other up and support each other. and we’re not victims. we’re very strong and we’re capable of many, many things.”
Watch the clip above.