Ellen Pompeo Didn’t Want to Say Iconic ‘Pick Me, Choose Me, Love Me’ Grey’s Anatomy Line: ‘Why Would I Beg?’

Ellen Pompeo was not a fan of her Grey’s Anatomy character’s most iconic line.

On the most recent episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, the Good American Family star had just two words for Meredith Grey in response to the character begging Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) to leave his wife for her in a 2005 episode of the long-running ABC medical drama: “Girl. bye.”

“There was a lot of stuff that I didn’t wanna do at the time,” Pompeo, 55, explained later in the conversation. “I didn’t wanna say, ‘Pick me, choose me, love me.’ ”

However, she credited series creator Shonda Rhimes with knowing that the line would resonate with the show’s audience.

Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ in 2009.

“She knew that was gonna pop,” Pompeo recalled. “I was like, ‘Why would I do this? Why would I beg, why would I?’ And you know, you have to just suck it up and do it. And it ended up being, you know, the biggest thing ever, the most iconic things ever. So, I’m not always the best judge of, you know, what’s gonna [work].”

This isn’t the first time Pompeo has discussed resisting the line. During a 2023 conversation with Katherine Heigl for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series, she reminded her former Grey’s Anatomy costar that she “fought that speech so hard.”

“That’s another really interesting thing about life,” Pompeo said. “Some things that I was so against — I was like ‘Why would I beg a man? I can’t beg a man on TV, this is so embarrassing.’ And then it turns out to be, like, one of the most successful scenes.”

Patrick Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ in 2005.

“In the scene, I’m crying, but I’m really crying because I have to beg a man on television,” she added.

That wasn’t the only time Pompeo shed real tears on the Grey’s set. On Call Her Daddy, she also revealed that both she and T.R. Knight cried during their characters’ famously traumatic season 2 sex scene.

“The scene was so uncomfortable and awkward, and he didn’t wanna do that. I didn’t wanna do it,” she recalled. “And when we filmed it, it was so bad.”