If you didn’t know that Oscar winner Denzel Washington directed an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy,” then you almost definitely don’t know that he and the show’s star, Ellen Pompeo, had a serious conflict during production.
The woman who played series lead Meredith Grey for 19 seasons of the hit medical drama created by Shonda Rhimes opened up about the on-set drama between her and Washington during a 2021 episode of the actress’ podcast “Tell Me with Ellen Pompeo.” (Pompeo officially left the series in early 2023, but she still regularly appears in episodes and provides the show’s voice-over). While chatting with her former “Grey’s Anatomy” co-star Patrick Dempsey, whose character Derek Shepherd — Meredith’s husband — was killed in season 11, Pompeo discussed the on-set issues she had with the Oscar-winning actor as they worked on a season 12 episode together.
In Pompeo’s view, she thinks that Washington potentially didn’t take the opportunity very seriously. “I think he saw it as a good exercise to just come in and direct something quick,” she told Dempsey. “Imagine Denzel Washington coming on to direct an episode of ‘Grey’s Anatomy?’ That’s something that I never thought that I would see, ever.” So where did it all go wrong? According to Pompeo, Washington didn’t know a whole lot about the show or Meredith Grey, and when she improvised during a pivotal scene and gave an in-character direction to another actor, he got angry with her. “Denzel went ham on my ass,” Pompeo recalled. “He was like, ‘I’m the director! Don’t you tell [Pompeo’s scene partner] what to do!'”
“I was like, ‘Listen, motherf*****, this is my show! This is my set!” Pompeo recalled to Dempsey during their interview. “‘Who are you telling? You barely know where the bathroom is!'” So what does Washington have to say about it? In a 2022 interview with Variety, Washington said he didn’t remember the incident in question before grinning and saying, “But it’s all good.”
The episode of Grey’s Anatomy that Denzel Washington directed is super intense
To be absolutely fair to Ellen Pompeo — who probably shouldn’t have blown up at Denzel Washington quite as badly as she says she did — the episode that the “Fences” director and star helmed was a very sensitive and very personal one for her character Meredith Grey. Throughout “Grey’s Anatomy,” it’s an understatement to say that Meredith has been through it; she sticks her hand into a body cavity holding a bomb in season 2, drowns in season 3, survives a mass shooting in season 6, a plane crash in season 8 (though the latter does kill her sister Lexie Grey, played by Chyler Leigh), and her husband dies in a car crash in season 11. In the episode Washington directed, “The Sound of Silence,” Meredith is treating a patient named Lou (Dohn Norwood) who just had a seizure … and in a moment of disoriented rage after the seizure, Lou brutally attacks Meredith, breaking her jaw and causing hearing loss.
As Meredith recovers, surrounded by her friends and colleagues, she loses hope, especially in a particularly heartbreaking moment when her kids come to visit her hospital room and are terrified to see her jaw wired shut. The scene that caused the apparent issue between Washington and Pompeo, though, is one where Lou asks to apologize to Meredith; in the podcast, Pompeo says she was frustrated that Norwood was playing Lou as quiet and meek at that moment and demanded, as Meredith, that he speak up and look at her during his apology. In the episode that airs, Meredith, who still cannot speak, takes Lou’s hand and forgives him.
“Grey’s Anatomy” is streaming on both Hulu and Netflix now.