The Truth About Ellen Pompeo And Denzel Washington's Tense Relationship

"Grey's Anatomy" has had its fair share of behind-the-scenes drama. Just recently, former cast member Isaiah Washington revealed that he almost played Dr. Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd on the show — but he ultimately didn't land the role because of Ellen Pompeo. "I didn't audition for Burke, I auditioned for McDreamy," Washington explained in an excerpt from the book "How to Save a Life" by Entertainment Weekly editor-at-large Lynette Rice.

"I had a beard and Afro and was going for a Ben Carson character at the time," he continued. "Shonda and I thought it was a great idea to represent a brain surgeon who looked like Dr. Ben Carson. That didn't go that way." Allegedly, Washington didn't get the part because Pompeo didn't want him as her love interest. "There's a rumor out there or something that Ellen didn't want me to be her love interest because she had a Black boyfriend [Chris Ivery]."

"The context is that she's not into white men," he continued. "I guess she implied that her boyfriend may have had a problem with her doing love scenes with me, so she felt uncomfortable. I supported her with that." As fans will know, Washington was let go from the ABC show in 2007, after he allegedly used gay slurs onset (per the New York Post). Though Pompeo has yet to comment on Washington's claims, she did speak about her tense on-set relationship with Denzel Washington. Find out more below.

Denzel Washington once worked behind the scenes of "Grey's Anatomy" as a director on Season 12. Titled "The Sound of Silence," the Washington-directed episode aired in February 2016 and saw Ellen Pompeo's character (Dr. Meredith Grey) brutally attacked by a patient at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital (via Grey's Anatomy Fandom).

While taping one scene from the episode, Pompeo yelled out a line that wasn't included in the script, which didn't sit well with Washington. "I was like, 'Look at me when you apologize. Look at me,'" the actor told co-star Patrick Dempsey on the podcast "Tell Me with Ellen Pompeo," via E! News. "Denzel went ham on my a**. He was like, 'I'm the director. Don't you tell him what to do.'"

Pompeo isn't the one to back down, though. "I was like, 'Listen, motherf****r, this is my show,'" she said. "This is my set. Who are you telling?" Despite the tense incident, the actor revealed that she has nothing but respect for Washington as a director and actor, and the two quickly patched things up. "So, we didn't get through it without a fight, but that's actors for you," she continued. "Passionate and fiery and that's where you get the magic, and that's where you get the good stuff. So, it was an amazing experience, it really was." Pompeo recently shared another theory on why actors tend to argue so much on set. Read below.

In a 2020 cover interview with Variety, "Grey's Anatomy" actor Ellen Pompeo and showrunner Krista Vernoff explained why there's so much off-screen drama among talent and production. For Pompeo, it boils down to actors getting frustrated due to the long hours. "Nobody should be working 16 hours a day, 10 months a year — nobody," she said. "And it's just causing people to be exhausted, pissed, sad, depressed. It's a really, really unhealthy model." 

In a post-COVID world, Pompeo hopes to never go back to 22-episodes-long seasons. "It's why people get sick," she continued. "It's why people have breakdowns. It's why actors fight! You want to get rid of a lot of bad behavior? Let people go home and sleep." Pompeo's long hours come with some nice compensation, though. She currently earns as much as $550,000 per episode, as well as an additional $6 million in syndication profits every year, per Forbes.

According to Vernoff, meanwhile, past behind-the-scenes fights were due to the actors being younger and less mature. "There was a lot of drama on-screen and drama off-screen, and young people navigating intense stardom for the first time in their lives," the showrunner explained. "I think that a lot of those actors, if they could go back in time and talk to their younger selves, it would be a different thing. Everybody's grown and changed and evolved — but it was an intense time."