Meredith Grey might be a medical badass, but to be totally honest, she doesn't hold a candle to Ellen Pompeo [1]. The actress recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter [2] to discuss her 14-year reign as Grey's Anatomy [3]'s leading lady, and she wasn't afraid to get candid about the silver lining of the controversial death [4] of her onscreen love interest, Derek Shepherd [5] (Patrick Dempsey [6]). The article, which describes Pompeo as "TV's $20 Million Woman," reveals that Derek's death paved the way for the actress to finally negotiate for what she's worth.
"For me, Patrick [Dempsey] leaving the show [in 2015] was a defining moment, deal-wise," she said. "They could always use him as leverage against me — 'We don't need you; we have Patrick' — which they did for years. I don't know if they also did that to him, because he and I never discussed our deals. There were many times where I reached out about joining together to negotiate, but he was never interested in that."
Killing off fan-favorite Derek Shepherd — which Grey's Anatomy [8] creator Shonda Rhimes once said had to happen [9] "in order for [Meredith and Derek's] love to remain honest" — naturally left fans gutted. That being said, the show has continued on just fine without him, thanks to Pompeo's rock-solid performance [10].
"At one point, I asked for $5,000 more than [Dempsey] just on principle, because the show is Grey's Anatomy and I'm Meredith Grey," Pompeo said. "They wouldn't give it to me. And I could have walked away, so why didn't I? It's my show; I'm the number one. I'm sure I felt what a lot of these other actresses feel: why should I walk away from a great part because of a guy? You feel conflicted, but then you figure, 'I'm not going to let a guy drive me out of my own house.'"
After Dempsey's exit, Grey's Anatomy did try to replace him with Martin Henderson's Dr. Nathan Riggs (Pompeo: "I couldn't believe how fast the studio and the network felt like they had to get a penis in there"), but it soon became clear that Meredith could more than lead the show on her own. But with Rhimes leaving ABC for Netflix [12], will Pompeo follow suit? Don't worry — not only does it look like she's sticking around for a while, but ABC is also finally paying her what she deserves.
"What happened is that I went to Shonda and I said, 'If you're moving on to Netflix and you want the show to go down, I'm cool with that. But if you want it to continue, I need to be incentivized. I need to feel empowered and to feel ownership of this show.'"
The medical drama is set to embark on the second half of season 14 [13] on Jan. 18. Read Pompeo's interview in full here [14].