Ellen Pompeo reflects on pay disparity with Patrick Dempsey

Ellen Pompeo has reflected on her past pay disparity with Patrick Dempsey.

The actress has opened up about asking for more money in the early days of her role on the hit drama series Grey's Anatomy.

In 2018, Pompeo - who played Meredith Grey on the show - became the highest-paid actress in a TV drama, earning $20 million (£15 million) per season.

Speaking on the latest episode of Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast, the actress recalled that before her pay rise, she argued that she and co-star Dempsey, who played her on-screen husband Derek Shepherd, should be on the same salary.

"To be completely fair, the television game was so different then," the 55-year-old recalled. "He had done 13 pilots before me."

She continued, "Nothing personal to him, just in general, only a man can have 13 failed TV pilots and their quote keeps going up, right? But in all fairness, his quote was what it was."

Pompeo then acknowledged that she was less well-known than Dempsey at the time.

"He was a bigger star than I was at that point. No one knew who I was," she told Cooper. "Everybody knew who he was, so he did deserve that money. I'm not saying he didn't deserve that money."

The actress continued, "It's just, being that I was the namesake of the show, I deserved the same and that was harder to get."

Pompeo clarified that she "wasn't salty" about Dempsey's higher salary, but noted, "I was salty that they didn't value me as much as they valued him, and they never will."

The actress stepped back as the drama's lead character in 2022 and is now starring in the new TV series Good American Family, which premiered on Hulu in the U.S. on Wednesday.