Ellen Pompeo Reveals if She’ll Leave ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ on ‘Jennifer Hudson Show’ (VIDEO)
Ellen Pompeo‘s media tour in support of Good American Family continued on Wednesday (April 2) as she hit up The Jennifer Hudson Show to talk about the Hulu miniseries. Before she could dig into her meaty role as Kristine Barnett, the adoptive mother of Natalia Grace, though, she had to talk about the show that’s made her a permanent fixture of the small screen.
Jennifer Hudson asked the actress what she remembered about filming the pilot, which just turned 20 years old, and Pompeo answered frankly, “Nothing!” What she did remember, though, was that she didn’t expect the show to become such an iconic and long-lasting fan favorite.
“Of course not!” she admitted. The fans are so — they keep it alive. It’s their show, really, now. They’ve taken it over.”
Hudson then asked Pompeo whether she thinks it will continue (it has not yet been renewed for Season 22 by ABC, but it is reportedly likely that it will be; it was also moved to the 10/9c spot on the network’s schedule as freshman soap drama Doctor Odyssey took over the 9/8c hour).
“Sure, yeah. I don’t think that show will ever end,” Pompeo responded. “I don’t know, no, but I’ll always pop in and out. You know, that’s my home, and I don’t think Miss [Debbie] Allen will let me ever leave, our mutual friend.”
The talk show host went on to ask her how her husband, Chris Ivery, feels about seeing her in some of the show’s steamier scenes, and she admitted, “He doesn’t watch Grey’s Anatomy. That’s how I’ve been married so long! … He’s too busy watching sports. He’s not interested in all that nonsense.”
One family member who did watch it — at least for a while — is her daughter Stella Luna, who is now a teenager.
“It gets to a point where they get to be, I don’t know, maybe 10 or 11, and all the classmates start watching it. And she says, ‘Mommy, can I watch it?’ And I can’t believe that sometimes 10 and 11-year-olds watch the show because I know you know what was going on in those early years — and still goes on, I guess,” she remembered. “So, yes, I’ve watched a few seasons with her, and then I think she had it. Like a lot of people do when they see 007, when they see that George O’Malley died, they are just like, ‘I’m done. I can’t do it!’ And so I think she made it as far as that.”
Elsewhere in the segment, she talked about how Taylor Swift helped her earn “cool points” with her kids and used their “Bad Blood” connection to benefit a children’s hospital program. Watch the full exchange above.
