Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo dropped a bombshell on the public during her recent visit to “The View.” The actress mentioned over the last few years, her life has been approached for being married to a Black man.
The revelation came while she was promoting her new Hulu series, “Good American Family,” and left the studio audience visibly stunned.
When asked how she maintained confidence despite negative tabloid headlines early in her career, Pompeo delivered an unexpected response.
“I think all young women struggle with confidence, and it makes you super self-conscious. But I also had other fish to fry. I had bigger things [to worry about],’ Pompeo said before revealing the mean messages she received for being married to a Black man. “It’s not the only thing I dealt with,” she revealed, her voice unwavering.
Pompeo has been married to Chris Ivery, a record producer and writer, since 2007 after meeting him in a Los Angeles grocery store in 2003.
The couple discovered they had grown up just minutes apart in Boston, with Pompeo later saying to People, “We were six degrees our whole lives, so I feel like we were sort of meant to be.”
They now share three children together, and sometimes, the tension trickles down to their kids and their friends.
In 2018, as a guest on Jada Pinkett Smith’s “Red Table Talk,” she shared an eye-opening incident involving her biracial daughter Stella and a young Black girl who visited their home.
The child was visibly uncomfortable when she realized Pompeo, a white woman, was Stella’s mother.
“The little girl came in, and I introduced myself, and I said, ‘I’m Stella’s mom.’ She looked at me, and she was almost scared,” Pompeo recalled. “Then she went right to Stella and said, ‘That’s your mom? I thought that was your mom,’ pointing to the nanny.”
When Willow Smith suggested the child might have been “confused,” Pompeo quickly added, “Confused, yeah, but again non-trusting, possibly.”
Pompeo’s interracial relationship has also affected her professional life. During the casting of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Isaiah Washington was initially considered for the role of Dr. Derek Shepherd, Pompeo’s love interest.
According to Washington in Lynette Rice’s book “How to Save a Life,” Pompeo wasn’t comfortable with the pairing.
“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,” Washington said. “The context is that she’s not into white men.”
Pompeo confirmed this in 2013, saying, “You know they wanted Isaiah Washington to be my boyfriend. Shonda really wanted to put a Black man in the mix. I didn’t think they were really going to put an interracial couple on the show and I didn’t want him. It was too close to home. I said I wanted that Dempsey kid.”
Despite the challenges, Pompeo has continued to advocate for empathy.
Pompeo credited Shonda Rhimes for teaching her that “closed mouths don’t get fed and that no one will just give you something. You have to ask, and all anyone can say is no.”
From Debbie Allen, she learned perhaps her most valuable lesson:
“Be still. Sometimes an action doesn’t need a reaction. That’s served me very well because I’m a little hot-headed Irish-Italian,” she said when sharing the wisdom from the Howard graduate.
