Ellen Pompeo played Meredith Grey for 19 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy before she stepped away from series regular. Pompeo had been the face, or rather, the voice of the show since its pilot episode in 2005. However, in her two decades of working on the show, Pompeo had some issues when it came to some of her character arcs.
Pompeo found Grey’s relationship arcs to be the most problematic, with her listing out issues right from Season 2 to Season 19. Pompeo’s one iconic line in the series comes from Season 2, but the actress absolutely hated filming the scene as she didn’t want to say the line where she had to beg a man.
Ellen Pompeo Was Not Happy With One Iconic Line Where She Had To Beg A Man
For the first few seasons, Grey’s Anatomy played around the usual will-they-won’t-they relationship between Ellen Pompeo‘s Meredith Grey and Patrick Dempsey‘s Derek Shepherd. In Season 2, the tension between Meredith and Derek reaches a high point. Episode 5, titled Bring the Pain, saw the titular character confessing her love to Derek in a monologue.
Pompeo delivers one of the most iconic lines in the climax of this monologue, as her character tells Derek, “pick me, choose me, love me.” However, Pompeo didn’t really like saying the line on camera. She revealed to co-star Katherine Heigl during Variety’s Actors on Actors that she fought the speech so hard in that particular scene.
She shared that she was against filming a scene where she had to beg for the love of a man. She was surprised when it turned out to be one of the most famous lines. She further told Heigl that she was actually crying in the scene because of her embarrassing scene. She shared with Heigl (via Variety):
Listen, I don’t know if you remember that I fought that speech so hard. That’s another really interesting thing about life — some things that I was so against, and I was like, ‘I can’t beg a man on TV! This is so embarrassing.’ And then it turns out to be one of the most famous scenes ever. […] In the scene, I’m crying, but I’m really crying because I have to beg a man on television.
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Heigl called it a beautiful scene despite Pompeo’s issue with it. Both Pompeo and Heigl recalled that their daughters uttered the famous line to them. Pompeo shared, “My daughter and her friends, they sit around and they’re like, ‘Oh, she’s a ‘pick me’ girl.’” However, Pompeo’s daughter was unaware that her mom made the line famous.
Ellen Pompeo Had Issues With Her Relationship Arcs in Grey’s Anatomy
Ellen Pompeo’s love interests in Grey’s Anatomy range from Patrick Dempsey’s Derek Shepherd to Scott Speedman’s Nick Marsh. She shared with Heigl that she had issues with her relationships in the series. She shared that she wanted to see the evolution and growth of the character and that she really needed Meredith to stop making bad decisions.
She shared that she wanted the writers to come up with new conflicts for Meredith’s personal life instead of her inability to maintain relationships. She shared with Heigl:
One of my frustrations is the Nick and Meredith of it all. Scott Speedman plays Meredith’s love interest, Nick Marsh, and I love Speedman. He’s fantastic. And somehow, Meredith can’t figure out how to make a relationship work still after all this time.
And I guess if she were to make it work, then where’s the conflict?…There has to be conflict. It’s not that I don’t think there shouldn’t be conflict. There should be conflict. I guess I just have different ideas about what the conflict should be.
Pompeo is no longer a series regular on Grey’s Anatomy. She is still the narrator and even appeared in a few episodes as a recurring character instead of being the main protagonist. Grey’s Anatomy episodes are now available for streaming on Hulu.