Ellen Pompeo not too long ago shared her expertise of being on Gray’s Anatomy, exposing the frustration she harbored for all these years being undervalued because the star of the present regardless of being one — particularly in comparison with co-star Patrick Dempsey, who at first had a greater wage regardless of having had 13 failed pilots.
Showing on the newest episode of the Name Her Daddy podcast, Pompeo talked about her expertise on the cult-favorite medical drama, stepping again from the main position, and making a transition to Hulu’s Good American Household.
She additionally plunged into the combat she waged to earn equal pay, finally reaching the standing of highest-paid actress in a tv drama in 2018, incomes $20 million a season.
Pompeo acknowledged that Dempsey’s larger wage was comprehensible initially. He was a extra veteran actor with larger identify recognition, and he or she was not well-known. She mentioned, “To be fully truthful, the tv sport was so totally different then. He had finished 13 pilots earlier than me.”
From a enterprise standpoint, his fame and publicity had been well worth the greater paycheck. Regardless of having 13 failed pilots, Pompeo famous, “[Dempsey] was a much bigger star than [she] was at that time. Nobody knew who I used to be. Everyone knew who he was, so he did deserve that cash. I am not saying he did not deserve that cash. It is simply that I used to be the namesake of the present, and I deserved the identical, however that was more durable to get.”
She mentioned, “I wasn’t salty about him getting what he obtained. I used to be salty that they did not worth me as a lot as they valued him, they usually by no means will.”
Nonetheless, because the collection expanded with Pompeo as its core character, she felt she must be rewarded primarily based on how she was pivotal to the muse of the present. Previous to requesting a wage enhance, Pompeo went out of her strategy to focus on the difficulty with showrunner Shonda Rhimes as a result of the actress had religion in her.
Pompeo famous, “I see precisely how a lot ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ makes for ABC/Disney. I get to see the quantity. It is my face, it is my voice. I’ve finished a lot work selling the present everywhere in the world for the previous 20 years. I’m the Disney princess of that franchise.”
Her anger was not in opposition to Patrick Dempsey himself however in opposition to the community’s refusal to acknowledge her equal worth to the success of the present. For Ellen Pompeo, the precise letdown was the continued business pondering that positioned larger worth on male stars.
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