Here’s Why People Are Saying Ellen Pompeo Snapped (In the Best Way)
The Internet has decided that Ellen Pompeo “snapped” on a Porter panel with fellow women of TV Gabrielle Union, Emma Roberts, and Gina Rodriguez—but the declaration is a huge compliment, as the discussion itself actually turned into another stop on Pompeo’s recent truth-telling tour, this time with America’s favorite fictional doctor doling out very honest statements on race in entertainment. If her fellow actors’ reactions were any indication, even in this latest Year of Women, hearing Pompeo’s points said out loud is still very rare, especially from the highest paid white woman on television.
For a Pompeo realness refresher, the woman many of us know as Meredith Grey made waves in January with a candid interview in which she described exactly how she went about securing $600,000 per episode and a production deal for her own company from Disney, as well as how network execs used Patrick Dempsey to intimidate her in negotiations (Dempsey himself, according to Pompeo, declined to negotiate together openly when it came to salary). The interview gave us the now-iconic Pompeo-ism “I’m not fuckin’ Julia Roberts,” the succinct phrase with which Pompeo characterized getting honest with herself about the likelihood of a future movie career when she spends almost all her time filming Grey’s.
Fast-forward almost a year later, to the Porter interview, and Pompeo started right off the bat with comments on equal pay, an issue that has been a rallying cry around which women in the industry have coalesced in the wake of the Times Up movement (Michelle Williams and Claire Foy are a few examples of actors who have benefited from new transparency around salaries and the gender gap). Rather than repeat now-familiar talking points about equal pay between women and men, Pompeo brought up the much-needed issue of class disparity: namely that centering conversations about equality among some of the wealthiest people in society is perhaps not the best way to go about achieving it. “We’re in very rarefied air,” Pompeo said. “Women in normal jobs are in different situations than us, so I sort of feel very out of touch even to talk about my fight for my pay . . . . My hairdresser of 12 years Thursday walked off set because she did not see that she was being paid fairly. Even though we struggle in our industries, we’re struggling a lot less than people who get normal jobs.”
And Pompeo’s analysis didn’t stop at the gap between actors and everyone else on set. She even called out corporate executives who make billions off the back end of deals that even actors never see. “If we talk about Grey’s Anatomy and who has profited from it, it’s Disney the corporation, the shareholders,” she said. And then there are the agents, who certainly weren’t immune to Pompeo’s truth bombs: “The fact that it took this long; our representatives should have been more transparent or protective . . . . They weren’t.”
The conversation then opened to Rodriguez and Union, who echoed Pompeo’s words about the difficulty of speaking up about their own compensation—but to make inverse points. They both described how, as women of color, they felt for many years that they could only express gratitude for making it as far as they did as actors. Only when they felt they had the opportunity to advocate for themselves and for others in Hollywood circles of power did they do so.
Their exchanges led to the biggest bombshell moment of the interview: when Pompeo looked out at the crew assembled to film them for the panel discussion and called out the lack of diversity she saw. “This day has been incredible, and there’s a ton of women in the room,” Pompeo said. “But I don’t see enough color. And I didn’t see enough color when I walked into the room today.
“As Caucasian people, it’s our job, it’s our task,” she continued. “It’s our responsibility to make sure we speak up in every single room we walk into. It’s our job because we created the problem.”
The reactions of the other women on the panel showed how unusual it is to hear white actors speak so truthfully about how much the silence around lack of diversity and inclusion contributes to the very problem. Union’s facial expressions were quickly noted on social media, as were Roberts’s, who looked distressed when Pompeo began crying as Rodriguez described, with emotion, how she in turn has tried to create her own spaces in the projects she works on that bring other people of color, and women of color, with her.
It’s important to note that Pompeo’s comments don’t absolve the structural imbalance between white and non-white actors in Hollywood; on the contrary, they are powerful in that they very honestly reveal in detail how disparities in opportunities persist beyond talking points or buzzwords about inclusion. Pompeo and Union discussed the all-white schools in their neighborhoods that de facto segregate black and white children and their parents; Pompeo described leaving a political event thrown by a friend because there were only white people in the room. We can only hope that she keeps on snapping all over Hollywood.
