Ellen Pompeo recently shared an emotional moment on the set of Grey’s Anatomy that had her struggling to keep her emotions in check. She said her daughter also cried at the scene.
“Now or Never,” the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy Season 5, was an intense, emotional rollercoaster with the fate of Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) and George O’Malley (T.R. Knight) hanging in the balance. When an unrecognizable John Doe is rushed to the emergency room after being hit by a bus, he communicates with Meredith (Pompeo), tracing “007” on her hand — letting her know he is actually George.
“Double-oh seven. Which, by the way, my daughter had the same reaction when she saw the 007. She literally cried,” Pompeo said in an interview with People. “I had to film it and I couldn’t hold it together.” O’Malley earned the “007” nickname in the show’s first season, when he froze in the operating room and almost killed a patient, with the nickname being a reference to James Bond’s “license to kill”.
“Now or Never” ended on a cliffhanger, with the fates of George and Izzie left uncertain. The episode marked the last regular appearance of T.R. Knight as Dr. George O’Malley. After his life-threatening accident, the character died in the Season 6 premiere. Knight later returned during Grey’s Anatomy Season 17 for a dream sequence.
Pompeo Doesn’t Want Her Children to Watch Grey’s Anatomy
While Pompeo shared how the Season 5 episode on Grey’s Anatomy made her daughter cry, she also told People that she’s not quite ready for her children to watch the medical drama. Pompeo’s three children are 15, 10 and 8 years old, and she realizes she can’t keep them from watching the series their entire lives. “What happens is all the classmates start watching it so you can only hold them off for so long because everyone in the class has seen it except your kid,” she said. “And then it gets awkward so you’re like, ‘Okay.'”
Pompeo said that her 10-year-old daughter’s friends are starting to watch Grey’s Anatomy, but she doesn’t agree with the decision. “But I still think there’s a lot of inappropriate stuff that 10-year-olds should not be seeing,” she said. “So no judgment on other parents, but I just don’t want to answer questions. I get some weird questions because I was in the scene. ‘So, why are your panties on the bulletin board?’ Really don’t want to talk about that right now.”