Ellen Pompeo discusses stepping away from 'Grey's Anatomy' and into new 'Good American Family' role

Back in November 2022, the actress decided to take a step back from her lead role on Grey's Anatomy, but as she promised in her Instagram post, she has been back to visit multiple times since. 

Told from multiple points of view, as a means to explore issues of perspective, bias, and trauma, this compelling drama is inspired by the disturbing stories surrounding a Midwestern couple who adopts a girl with a rare form of dwarfism. But as they begin to raise her alongside their three biological children, mystery emerges around her age and background, and they slowly start to suspect she may not be who she says she is. As they defend their family from the daughter they’ve grown to believe is a threat, she fights her own battle to confront her past and what her future holds, in a showdown that ultimately plays out in the tabloids and the courtroom.

As for Good American Family, it is her first project after 21 years of starring in the medical drama. "I didn’t know what I was going to do. I just knew that I really couldn’t do Grey’s anymore, that it was to the point where I really just felt like an animal at the zoo. Like I said, I’m a big believer in destiny and I thought, 'If there’s something else I’m meant to do, it’s gonna find me but I know I have to leave this,'" she shared. "I had really stepped away and I had said, 'I really have to step away, I can't do this anymore and if nothing else comes, nothing else comes.'"

"If I was going to do something different, it really had to be truly something different, right? I’m so well known as Meredith Grey. It had to be a role that I could completely disappear into," the actress expressed while speaking to The Hollywood Reporter. "I read the show bible. I read the pilot. I said, 'This is an insane script in the best possible way, but why would I want to play this character? I mean, this looks like [career] suicide.' There are so many ways this could get misinterpreted and go wrong, how do we not do the bad version of this show? They said, “You have to speak to Katie. You have to meet Katie, and you have to meet Imogen.” I did those two things, and I knew instantly that Katie was someone who’s so thoughtful, so smart and so empathetic, and her take on the perspective and how sensitive she is was going to allow for us to tell this story in the way it needs to be told, which is with sensitivity and awareness."

The Hulu series also stars Mark Duplass, Imogen Faith Reid, Dulé Hill, Christina Hendricks, Sarayu Blue, and Jenny O’Hara. The first two episodes premiere on March 19.