Ellen Pompeo will always be connected to Grey's Anatomy. She may no longer spearhead every episode, but she still provides narration and serves as an executive producer. Since she has been involved with the show for so long, however, Pompeo has been able to speak more frankly about her experiences making it.
This was incredibly evident during the actress' recent appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast. Pompeo was asked which Grey's Anatomy sex scene was the most uncomfortable to shoot, and she did not hesitate when it came to her answer. Pompeo deemed the sex scene between her character and George (T.R. Knight) in the season 2 was so bad she couldn't bring herself to watch it.
Pompeo was forced to shoot a sex scene twice
The actress clarified that her scene partner was not to blame. "T.R. and I are such good friends," she assured host Alex Cooper. It was the fact that neither actor wanted to execute the sex scene that led to it being such a "nightmare" to choreograph and shoot.
"The scene was so uncomfortable and awkward, and he didn’t wanna do that. I didn’t wanna do it," she added. "And when we filmed it, it was so bad." So bad, evidently, that the network asked Pompeo and Knight to reshoot it. "The network said there was too much thrusting," the former recalled. "In your worst nightmare, [you] have to do it one time. We had to reshoot that sh*t and do it twice."
In Ellen Pompeo's estimation, the second take did not improve anything. She refused to watch the scene when it aired days later, and has never seen the episode to this day. Discomfortingly, she does recall the tears she shed during the scene to be real due to how frustrated she was in the moment.
The actress also spoke on pay disparity
"I don’t know how it was shot or covered or edited," Pompeo explained. "But I’m full-on in tears, the whole entire scene. And those are real tears." In addition to awkward on set moments, Pompeo got real when it came to discussing the pay disparity between her and former co-star Patrick Dempsey during the first couple seasons of Grey's Anatomy.
Pompeo admitted to the Call Her Daddy host that Dempsey was the bigger name when the show first aired, but she was the title character. "Everybody knew who he was, so he did deserve that money. I’m not saying he didn’t deserve that money," the actress noted. "It’s just, being that I was the namesake of the show, I deserved the same and that was harder to get."
Pompeo eventually got her way. By 2018, she was the highest paid actress in a drama series, taking home $20 per season.