Los Angeles, April 15 (IANS) Actress Ellen Pompeo is categorically clear about her trajectory on the superhit show ‘Grey's Anatomy’. The actress, who has starred as Meredith Grey on the record-breaking medical drama since its premiere in 2005, took on a more scaled-back role in the ABC series beginning with season 19 in 2022.

However, she continues to be a major force at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, and has a very simple answer behind her decision, reports ‘People’ magazine.

"That would make no sense, emotionally or financially", Pompeo, 55, told El País of leaving the hit ABC series.

"The show was streamed more than a billion times in 2024. More than a billion times. The companies that own the show and stream the show make a lot of money from our images and our voices and our faces”, she said. "If I were to walk away completely, everybody gets to make money from my hard work for 20 years and I wouldn’t make any money. To me, it doesn’t make any sense that everybody (else) gets to profit off of my hard work. And emotionally, the show means a lot to people. I want to have an attitude of gratitude toward the show”.

As per ‘People’, Pompeo appeared in only eight episodes of season 19 of Grey's as she was filming her newest project, Hulu's ‘Great American Family’, and her character made the emotional decision to leave Seattle during that season.

Despite her departure, Meredith was around again in season 20 and in the latest installment, season 21, she is set to appear in at least seven episodes.

The evolution of Pompeo's role in the series came after she negotiated a $20 million deal in 2017 that made her the highest-paid actress on TV, earning $575,000 per episode.