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Behind the Scenes of Meredith Grey: Ellen Pompeo Discusses Iconic Moments

Meredith Grey, played by Ellen Pompeo, has often been referred to as the quintessential “pick me girl,” a label that the actress has publicly stated she never intended for her character in Grey’s Anatomy.

In a recent episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, Pompeo discussed her discomfort with one of the show’s most memorable lines: the famous “Pick Me, Choose Me, Love Me” monologue. She revealed that this particular scene was one she was hesitant to film.

“There was a lot of stuff that I didn’t wanna do at the time,” she admitted. “I didn’t wanna say, ‘Pick me, choose me, love me.’ And to [creator Shonda Rhimes’] credit, she knew that was going to pop.”

The impactful scene takes place in Season 2, during the episode titled “Bring the Pain,” which was penned by Rhimes. In this moment, Meredith expresses her feelings for Derek Shepherd, caught in a complicated love triangle between him and his estranged wife, Addison Montgomery.

“I’m sure she’s really great,” Meredith states in the scene. “But Derek, I love you, in a really, really big, pretend-to-like-your-taste-in-music, let-you-eat-the-last-piece-of-cheesecake, hold-a-radio-over-my-head-outside-your-window, unfortunate way that makes me hate you, love you. So pick me. Choose me. Love me.”

Upon reflecting on this iconic moment during her podcast interview, Pompeo expressed her initial reservations about the scene. “I was like, ‘Why would I do this? Why would I beg? Why would I?’ And you have to just suck it up and do it,” she explained. “And it ended up being the biggest thing ever, the most iconic [thing] ever. So, I’m not always the best judge of what’s gonna [work]. It’s not like I said it wasn’t going to be good. I was just like, ‘I don’t want to do that.’”

In her conversation with former co-star Katherine Heigl during a Variety “Actors on Actors” episode, Pompeo recounted a moment when she overheard her daughter and her friends describing someone as a “pick me girl.” This led to a conversation where she jokingly noted, “Uh, do you, uh, hello? Do you know who invented the pick me girl?”

Pompeo shared that there were also other scenes throughout the series that she found challenging, including a moment in Season 2 where Meredith tries to get closer to George O’Malley, played by T.R. Knight. She expressed that the love scene was fraught with discomfort for both actors.

“T.R. and I are such good friends, and we had to do a love scene, and we were both crying,” she recalled. “And the scene was so uncomfortable and awkward, and he didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to do it, and when we filmed it, it was so bad. The network said there was too much thrusting. In your worst nightmare, to have to do it one time. We had to re-shoot that s***. We had to re-shoot it and do it twice. … I’m full-on in tears the whole entire scene, and those are real tears.”

Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC

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