Ellen Pompeo reveals sad reason why she will never quit Grey’s Anatomy

Ellen Pompeo has revealed why she will never quit Grey's Anatomy, after being on the show for 20 years.

Ellen - who stars as Meredith Grey on the medical drama - started when the show first began in 2005, and remains the programme's longest running actor.

She left the show during the 19th season, which aired in February 2023, although the actor has since returned for regular appearances and voiceovers.

In a new interview, Ellen explained why she hasn't ever fully left the TV show.

“That would make no sense, emotionally or financially. The show was streamed more than a billion times in 2024. More than a billion times,” Pompeo told El País.

"The companies that own the show and stream the show make a lot of money from our images and our voices and our faces."

She continued: “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.”

When asked why she took on another role in A Good American Family after cutting back on Grey's, Ellen added: “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."

Ellen has been on the show since it began (Randy Holmes/Contributor/Getty Images)

In a separate interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Ellen recently opened up about her lengthy tenure on the show, admitting there was another slightly bittersweet reason why she decided to stick with it for so long.

She told host Alex Cooper how she hadn’t taken ‘the most normal path’ as an artist, saying actors want to ‘chase the trophies... being relevant... the new, sexy, hot, shiny thing.'

While it was always in the ‘back of her mind’ about how things may have panned out if she hadn’t remained on the show, the mum-of-three said her choice allowed her to have a ‘really full home life’, which probably wouldn’t have been the case if she’d taken a ‘different, more creative path.'

When Cooper asked if filming in LA – as opposed to jetting all over the world for different projects – allowed her to juggle the job with parenting and give her a ‘steady lifestyle’, Ellen replied: “Different things work for different people.”

Ellen explained the bittersweet reason she stayed on the show (Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)

The star continued: “At a certain point, I had a choice to sort of finish my contract or stay, and at the age I was, I was like, ‘Oh, well I’ll be 40 when my first contract is up. I better re-sign and take this money,’ because they offer you, ‘If you re-sign, we’ll give you this giant raise.’

“So I thought – back then, 20 years ago – women at 40, it’s over. That’s a wrap, honey. So I was like, ‘I better sign and I better do this because this is the most money I’m ever going to make, and the most opportunity I’m ever going to get.”