Grey’s Anatomy’s Ellen Pompeo Got “Frustrated” With the Treatment of Meredith Grey: “She Can Stop Making Bad Decisions”

As reported by Variety, star Ellen Pompeo recently reflected on her feelings towards Grey’s Anatomy’s treatment of her character Meredith Grey. During a Grey’s reunion interview with former Grey’s star Katherine Heigl, Pompeo spoke about her feelings towards her character’s lack of growth during her time on the series.

Over the course of Meredith’s 19 seasons on Grey’s, the character had many love interests, including Patrick Dempsey’s Derek Shepherd and Scott Speedman’s Nick Marsh. Still, according to Pompeo, her character’s repeated relationship conflicts turned into a serious irritation for the actor. Pompeo said:

“When you stay on a show and with a character that long…for me, I really need to make sense of things and I really need to see evolution and growth. And with network television specifically, there has to be some consistency for the audience. The audience wants familiarity.””The writers get stuck in the consistency of something, and it’s harder, which I always would argue against and say, ‘We have such an incredible fan base. They’re so loyal. They’ll literally come along with us no matter what we do.’ I think it’s okay for Meredith to stop making bad decisions.”

The Station 19 star went on to say that she’d wanted her character’s love life to stop being an ongoing conflict, as it revealed Meredith was unable to experience any type of growth from her relationships.

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Ellen Pompeo Said She Had “Different Ideas About What the Conflict For Her Character Should Be”

Although there are many who believe Grey’s Anatomy ran its course many seasons ago, the show continues on. Pompeo has stepped back from being a series regular earlier this year, but did comment on some of the ways she would have taken her character in a different direction. She continued:

“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.”

Though Pompeo is no longer a physical presence on the series, the star continues to provide voiceovers as Meredith continues to narrate each episode. This also allows Pompeo to continue making some physical appearances on Grey’s.

The Grey’s Anatomy star has previously been open about sharing her feelings with the long-running ABC series. Last August, on an episode of her podcast Tell Me, Pompeo stated that she’d hoped the show would change the way that it approached stories involving social issues and noted that she’d gotten fed up with episode one-offs.

Pompeo said, “I think if I had any desire honestly it would be to be less sort of preachy in one episode about certain things. It’s like, we do one episode about let’s see…Asian hate crimes is one that we did this past season that was really moving. I think I’d like to see things happen a little more subtly and over time. You know, consistently and less sort of hit you over the head for just one hour and then we never talk about it again.”