‘I have not met Meredith the cat’: Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo on Taylor Swift – and her next role

Ellen Pompeo – aka the star of Grey’s Anatomy – discusses her new role and her ‘cool mum’ connection to Taylor Swift.

There’s nothing like starring in a Taylor Swift video to cement “cool mum” status. Of Ellen Pompeo’s three children, only her eldest daughter Stella, 15, has watched the actor in the long-running TV medical drama Grey’s Anatomy.

But they have all appreciated her performance in the 2015 film clip for Swift’s song ‘Bad Blood’.

“I have a lot of great women in Hollywood to thank for giving me the moniker of ‘cool mum’,” Pompeo tells Stellar. “Taylor being one of them. I love Taylor.

“One of the things she did with that video is pay homage to the women who came before her. She paid homage to me, to Mariska Hargitay and to Cindy Crawford.”

‘I wouldn’t change anything!’ Ellen Pompeo has opened up about her decision to step back from Grey’s Anatomy. Picture: Getty Images

Pictured in New York earlier this month, Ellen Pompeo has opened up about Taylor Swift naming her cat after Pompeo’s Grey’s Anatomy character, Meredith. Picture: Getty Images

Ellen Pompeo is happy ‘being in the orbit’ of Taylor Swift, who is a confessed fan of Pompeo’s Grey’s Anatomy work. Picture: Getty Images

The 55-year-old says she loves “being in the orbit” of Swift, who – like Pompeo herself – is “paving the way” for women coming up.

“There aren’t many young artists who, at the top of their game like her, would necessarily think about a bunch of older women like us, who are well established,” she says.

“A bit of self-deprecation here, but we are not the moment, per se. Right? We’ve ‘had’ our moment.

“We’re still out there in pop culture. People still love us, we’re still working and thriving.

“But you’re not at the height of your career, like you are in your 30s.”

New co-stars! Mark Duplass, Imogen Faith Reid and Ellen Pompeo at the Los Angeles premiere of Good American Family earlier this month. Picture: Getty Images

Swift has shown admiration for Pompeo in other ways, too: perhaps most notably, she named one of her beloved cats Meredith Grey after the actor’s TV doctor.

“I have not met Meredith the cat,” Pompeo says with a laugh of Swift’s pampered Scottish Fold. “But I am very allergic. So while I would like to, it might have to be through a window.”

There are certainly more windows in Pompeo’s life now she’s scaled back her role on Grey’s. While she continues as a narrator and executive producer, after 21 seasons she’s no longer a series regular.

“There wasn’t a light-bulb moment where I thought: I’m going to stay for 20 years,” she explains.

‘I can create a character that’s completely different!’ As Meredith Grey in Grey's Anatomy. Picture: Supplied

“Every few years, you have a choice to either renew your contract or not renew your contract, and then you weigh in the factors of what’s going on around you at that time: is it good for your life, or is it not good for your life?”

Staying on the show for so long, she says, “allowed me to have a full family life that couldn’t have happened if I’d been on different projects filming all over the world”.

And if that stability came at the expense of being able to take on other roles, she reasons that “I do other creative things in my life. But now I am able to address that piece, and I am looking for more projects to scratch that creative itch that I haven’t been able to for the past 20 years.

“But I wouldn’t change anything if I could.”

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Pompeo is conscious of living up to fans’ expectations with Good American Family, which marks her first starring role since Grey’s.

“They have been extremely loyal to me for 20 years; I definitely don’t want to disappoint them,” she says.

The Disney+ drama is based on the 2010 adoption of Ukrainian refugee Natalia Grace by Kristine (Pompeo) and Michael Barnett (Mark Duplass).

The case, which continues to evolve, saw the Barnetts allege their seven-year-old daughter – who has a rare form of dwarfism – was an adult grifter plotting to kill them.

Emphasising that the series is a fictional interpretation, Pompeo says she was familiar with the family’s unusual claims thanks to the documentary The Curious Case Of Natalia Grace, explaining, “It was a story that gripped this country.”

She found playing an abusive wife and mother with a god complex particularly emotionally challenging “because it involves children. But once I read the script, I thought: well, this is definitely a character I can completely disappear into”.

“I can create a character that is completely different from Meredith Grey.”

Good American Family is streaming now on Disney+, with new episodes dropping Wednesdays.

Read Stellar’s exclusive interview with Ellen Pompeo. Inside The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA). For more from Stellar, listen to our podcast Something To Talk About, wherever you get your podcasts.

Originally published as ‘I have not met Meredith the cat’: Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo on Taylor Swift – and her next role