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Ellen Pompeo: Patrick Dempsey Wasn’t ‘Interested’ in Helping Me Get Fair Pay

“They could always use him as leverage against me—‘We don't need you; we have Patrick.’”

Ellen Pompeo claims Patrick Dempsey was not “interested” in helping her negotiate for a fair wage despite reaching out to him multiple times in the process of negotiating on Grey’s Anatomy. “They could always use him as leverage against me—‘We don't need you; we have Patrick’—which they did for years,” she said, in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter in which she discusses her rise to fame—and how she eventually accomplished a $20 million contract with ABC. “There were many times where I reached out about joining together to negotiate, but he was never interested in that,” Pompeo added. “At one point, I asked for $5,000 more than him just on principle, because the show is Grey’s Anatomy and I’m Meredith Grey. They wouldn’t give it to me.” Eventually, Pompeo said she just lived with it instead of leaving the long-running show because she had decided, “‘I’m not going to let a guy drive me out of my own house.’”