Ellen Pompeo talks ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ pay gap compared to Patrick Dempsey

Ellen Pompeo addresses Hollywood’s disparity in salaries between male and female actors

Ellen Pompeo shared her frustration over the pay gap between her and male co-star in the hit medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy.

Pompeo appeared on the latest episode of Call Her Daddy podcast, in which she talked about how felt about Patrick Dempsey getting a higher salary, despite her playing the titular character Meredith Grey.

“To be completely fair, the television game was so different then. He had done 13 pilots before me,” Pompeo recalled.

“Nothing personal to him, just in general, only a man can have 13 failed TV pilots and their quote keeps going up, right? But in all fairness, his quote was what it was.”

She also noted that Dempsey was already a known actor while she was doing her debut TV pilot.

“He was a bigger star than I was at that point. No one knew who I was. Everybody knew who he was, so he did deserve that money.”

However, that did not stop Pompeo from feeling undervalued compared to him while working on the show.

As the lead and “namesake of the show,” the 55-year-old artist felt she “deserved the same and then that was harder to get.”

“I wasn’t salty about him getting what he got,” she explained. “I was salty that they didn’t value me as much as they valued him and they never will.”

In 2018, she went on to negotiate a $20 million salary for her role but not before talking to the creator Shonda Rhimes, noting that she knew what she deserved before the negotiations began.

Grey’s Anatomy, the longest running primetime medical drama in TV history, is currently on its 21st season, airing every Thursday on ABC.