Ellen Pompeo: Elevating Voices On and Off Screen | Dreamforce 2025 | Salesforce

Please welcome soledad o' brien and ellen pompeo.

So I'm going to try my all not to completely fangirl out and embarrass myself during this interview. It is such a pleasure to have the opportunity to interview Ellen Pompeo, of course, one of television's most enduring icons. Can I call you an icon? Yes, I believe so.

Yes, I can.

19 seasons as Meredith Grey on Grey's Anatomy and so much more.

And I don't want to correct Soledad O', Brien, but it's 22 seasons.

22 seasons. Thank you for correcting me. So off screen, you have used your platform to talk about pay equity, creative ownership, truth telling in an industry that I don't think Hollywood's really known for. The truth telling part producer, actor, mom, you bring wisdom and edge and also a relentless drive to keep pushing even within a system. And I want to talk about all of that today. So thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Over your career you talked about, and lately I think as well, you've been talking about owning your voice. What exactly does that mean to you?

I think, you know, it depends on the situation. I think right now with the onslaught of AI, we could think about that phrase in a completely different way. But figuratively, I think, you know, have the confidence and the courage to be able to say what you think is important to be said because not everything needs to be said. I think I focus a lot on intention and what is my desired outcome. If I decide to speak up and I decide to make a comment and say something, what am I expecting to happen from that or what is the desired result and will I achieve that by speaking up? Because sometimes it's better to be quiet and listen more than you speak. So I think it is on a case by case, individual basis. And I feel if I can be add to the conversation, say something that is going to get us closer to a solution and it's going to be productive. Even if it's uncomfortable or hard to say or hard for people to hear, then it's worth saying, has that shifted.

Over your career when you were first starting out, how you thought about your voice to now?

Well, of course, I'm 55 years old and I have three children, so I'm very careful what I say to not embarrass my kids. But I think that as you get older, you maybe learn to listen more than you speak.

You've stepped into producing and you spend a lot of time championing new stories where what do you look for In a project now?

Well, I think the most important thing for me is to be passionate about a story. And producing is very, very difficult. And there's a million hurdles to get through. So you really have to be passionate about the storytelling and passionate about the group that's trying to push this boulder up the hill with you. Because if you're not passionate about the story, it's too hard to get something made. You really have to be in love with the story and have a passion to want to tell the story.

Are there broad topics where you're like, these are the things that I really care about right now?

No, I think producing is much more difficult than that. I don't have the privilege or the luxury to be able to say, I think this is important, and I want to make a show about that. Maybe some people do. I don't. At the end of the day, it's a business, and they expect your content to make money, and they will. Look at your content. Is this something that's profitable? Is it a profitable idea? For a long time, and I'm breaking out of it a bit now, but I believe that the question gets asked, will people believe Meredith Grey as this character? Do we want to see Meredith Gray do this completely different thing? And that's a real conversation. So, you know, there's lots of different things that go into my decision to put my energy and focus into one thing as opposed to another.

You have said that the truth, even if it's uncomfortable, is part of your power. And when I think of Hollywood, I don't think of, like, you know, tell me the truth. I think, like, it's a little bit the opposite of that. How is that your power?

You know, I think a lot of what has shaped me is where I come from, I grew up in a working class neighborhood in Boston. Massachusetts is a, you know, fiercely Democratic state, with the Kennedys being our icons. Profiles and Courage is a book that I grew up reading. And I think that as I got older and got more competent, you understand the importance of speaking up for people who may not necessarily be able to speak up for themselves. I was also raised in a Catholic family, so I'm not very religious now. But there was this ethos growing up of, we are responsible for one another. We've lost a lot of that recently with the way we've evolved, and technology has sort of taken over and we're less connected. And I think religion used to play a large part in how connected we felt to one another, and we felt more responsible for one another. And perhaps had more empathy because of that. But I do attribute the way I grew up and the place I grew up. As hard as it was, my childhood was certainly very challenging for a lot of reasons. But now I'm able to recognize how many things were instilled in me in my youth that I've carried through and had the smarts to be able to incorporate into my daily life and what I do every day.

This is a conference that's full of tech leaders who are trying to really figure out storytelling. They're here with their organization, but at the end of the day, they're trying to navigate their own workplace story. What advice do you give them for how to think about effective storytelling, how to make an impact with storytelling?

I'll say, and go back to my other point, which is listen more than you speak. Because everybody has a story and our stories matter, should matter to each other and we can impact each other greatly without even knowing it, you know, So I think we can continue to listen. And the piece about, you know, technology and what technology can't replace is our hearts and our minds and our feeling. And good storytelling makes you feel. One of the reasons people love Greys is they identify with one of the characters. Whoever is their favorite, whatever that character is going through touches something in that person's life. We can always watch a story and relate something back to ourselves and it touches a chord emotionally. Storytelling will always be the core of all of us, our individual stories. How do we bring our story, our childhood, our adult life experience, our divorce, our single parenting, our feeling marginalized, Whatever it is, we can always bring our own experience, tell a story about it and help someone else.

It sounds like you're saying a lot of these tech leaders should think about being very authentic about where they're coming from and telling stories more about themselves rather than their business.

I think, you know, good business is a blend of both things, right? But if you connect it to yourself and something you're passionate and emotional about, then you care. And if you care about something, it's easier to work harder toward a goal.

How has your voice evolved over the years that you have been working in a very high profile positions?

I don't know if I'm the one to comment on myself. How you know, how people receive me or perceive me. I'm not sure that I can answer that. I think I will say that how I feel is that I like to listen more than I speak now.

And you say now, so meaning when you were younger, that wasn't really your philosophy.

Yeah, I think you're young and you have a tendency to pop off once in a while. I definitely.

So many questions coming out of that one.

And listen, there have been places and times where that's been really effective and made others feel empowered to do the same, which has been for the better of people when. When women feel empowered. Because so often women don't feel empowered to be able to say how they feel. You know, we did an episode of Grey's Anatomy one time that I'll never forget, and the voiceover was a statistic that is real, because I checked when they wrote it. I said, is this real? That women's voices. Men don't hear women's voices the same way. I've been married for 20 years, so I definitely know this is true. Men don't hear women's voices in the same way they hear other men's voices. Like, the frequency literally does not get heard. So they're spoken over. They're interrupted. And so for women to understand that and know and say, please don't interrupt me, and want to make their point anyway and not be afraid to speak up is, you know, so it's worth all the popping off that I guess I did when I was younger. But, you know, also to an opposite point. I'd been in situations where I heard of a story and I thought a woman wasn't being treated well, and I sort of jumped in to a fight that wasn't mine in an effort to try to be helpful, try to use my power, try to use my voice, and it wasn't welcome. And I was shocked. And it was a hard lesson to learn. I thought it was defending someone and sticking up for someone, and that person didn't want it. And that was another lesson I had to learn. Wow. Okay. Maybe ask before, you know, is there some way I can help you? Would you like me to get involved? Would you like me to speak about this? Because that was a really confusing lesson for me because I had never encountered it before, but I suppose I wouldn't have encountered it had I not done it. You know, I just rushed and made a phone call on this person's behalf and demanded an apology. And this person said, I wish you would have let me do that. And I assumed that that person, because of the state I saw them in, wasn't able to do that and didn't feel the power to do that. So I thought, well, this is where I come in and I can do it, and I hurt someone. And it was a very valuable lesson.

I think it's back to your Listen before you do. Why has representation been so important to you over the years on screen, behind the scenes?

Well, because it's important that everybody feels seen. I think those are lessons that I really learned from the early days of Grey's Anatomy. And I learned I didn't walk onto the set knowing that at all. I did, as I said, grew up in Boston, which had a lot of racial tension. I don't live there anymore, so I can't speak to it now. But when I was growing up, there was a lot of racial tension that I was very aware of, and it was very confusing to me as a young person. But it was only an observation. You know, when I was young and didn't understand, I understood certain things that people have disgusting bias, but I wasn't educated or sophisticated in my thoughts about it. And then when I got to the set of Grey's Anatomy and we were telling stories and I got to work day in and day out with people from all walks of life and saw how meaningful the stories are to people, and then, of course, meet the fans and hear what they have to say, I really took on a deeper understanding of how important it is for everybody to feel represented.

I think a lot of people, when we talk about representation, think in front of the camera. But actually representation behind the scenes, behind the camera, is incredibly important because a lot of the power actually lies there.

And that's the evolution of my learning. So I will say I learned how much representation matters from underrepresented groups. Those were also tough lessons in the beginning Days of Grace, where I may have seemed ignorant and didn't understand the impact and the importance of. To other actors or to audience members that, you know, learning is painful. It's humbling and it's painful, but it's necessary. And humility will always be your best friend through learning. And my evolution of that education that I was so lucky to get, however painful, is now I understand that I can go into my business as a producer and that I do. I have been educated by Shonda Rhimes, by Debbie Allen, by everybody who I've worked with and move forward and make sure I educate other people who haven't had the blessing of that education. This is how we hire people and this is how we make sure everybody gets interviewed. But I've stepped in it many times, and I've had a lot of people, underrepresented groups, marginalized people, slap my hand and say, don't say that. Can't say that. You shouldn't say that. And that's what I tell my teenagers. We only learn from making mistakes. They sting. But you never do that again, hopefully.

I love how much you have embraced representation because it'd be very easy as a white woman, not to say, hey, I actually think this issue about black people is important. Right. People don't expect it. And I think sometimes it has an added power because it's not your group that you're talking about necessarily, and that you've learned it in many ways. The hard way is pretty remarkable.

Yeah, I've had to be very mindful. I'm not here to save. That's not my job. So it's a tricky line to walk. But how I navigate it now is I just try to listen and ask if my help is needed, and then if it is, I move forward. And if not, I keep my mouth shut because I've learned that not everybody is asking for me to help.

How has that translated into the production side of the. The business? When I started my production company, it was fun to be able to say, actually, here's what I want my company to look like. We're going to do this intentionally. Because I worked in a lot of organizations where that really wasn't intentional. In fact, people, I think, often just didn't see it. It didn't really matter to them. And so I have to imagine once you're a producer and you get to make those calls, you can be very intentional about what you want to see if in your organization.

And that's, you know the phrase, if you see it, you can be it. That's precisely my point. You know, whatever people's experience is and whatever they're exposed to, that's what they know. So if they don't see anything different, they don't realize if you've only ever worked on sets where, you know, it's a bunch of old white men who do whatever they want and they marginalize the women and don't listen to them. And then the young male directors coming up will behave the same exact way because that's all they know, that's all they've seen, and that's all they've been taught. They can't be anything they haven't seen. So it is our responsibility as content creators and producers to create an environment where people learn, oh, we can do this. I have spoken in the past about Shonda Rhimes attitude toward having a baby. You know, actresses historically were afraid to tell their employers they were pregnant, thought they would be fired, afraid to ask for maternity leave. Shonda Rhimes doesn't subscribe to any of that. You know, the confetti falls from the ceiling when you say you're pregnant, you're having a baby, and she figures out a way to make it work. I've told that story a million times because hopefully other female producers out there will hear that and understand there is a different way to embrace female employees and be happy for them. And whoever works for me, I now adopt that attitude because that attitude was adopted for me. So you can only be what you see. So we do have a responsibility to move forward in a way that's reflective of what we. What we want everyone's experience, what we want our own experience to be, and then that can be other people's experience.

Have you seen a shift generationally, like, over time, you're seeing that you have to do that work less because people are beginning to. To get it?

Yes. I did a Hulu show in a couple of years ago, and. And when we were hiring 200 crew members, I sort of thought I was being very mindful about who we were interviewing and making sure we were having a wide array of candidates to be able to look through their resumes and their experience and choose from. And I thought I had been very diligent, and I was sort of proud of how much work I put into that. And then I got to set the first day, and I looked around and I said, this is not. Visually. It's not what I was thinking. I thought we did a lot better than this. And then I. You know, you can't. You have to. You have to find a way to bring more people in, because obviously, you can't fire somebody for. You know, you can't. Once we're on set, there's nothing you can do, but you look for opportunities. So it's. Again, it's just keeping your eyes open and listening and being very aware and intentional in the way you do things and make decisions.

Yeah. I think the intention. And it doesn't end over and over and over again.

It's true. And I will say, as far as business goes, it makes far more sense to be inclusive in business because you're opening up more customers, more audience. I mean, you see some of the biggest success. Grey's Anatomy is a massive success because it appeals to so many people, because there was such a wide array of characters on that show that everybody can identify with. If you don't like me, you like this person, you don't identify with that person. You identify with this person. You see something in Them. And it just opened that world and that audience up exponentially. So it just is good business.

Have you. Do you have an opinion on whether you've loved the production side more or in front of the camera more?

Oh, I love it all. Yeah. It's two completely different muscles. And I think that that's another important trait to have in business, is to continue to learn and evolve and grow. Because you can really only be valuable if you continue your skills and your knowledge. If you only are a one trick pony and only do one thing, there may be somebody who does that one thing better than you, or you may get complacent and not do that thing as well as you used to do it. So the more you continue to grow and evolve and widen your skill set, you'll be more of an asset to a company because they can use you for multiple things, not just the one thing. Maybe you came into that company doing.

Was the transition to producing easy for you? And not necessarily even just for you, but how people. I found it very hard to be a TV anchor who then was a producer because it was hard for people. I love the work. I like doing everything, but it was hard for people to see me in a different role because I've been doing something else for a long time.

Of course, I'm Meredith Gray. That's all anybody wants to see.

We love Meredith Gray so much.

And that's okay, and I'm grateful for it and it's incredible. But obviously Ellen is kind of, you know, antsy and wants to do other things. So. No, to answer your question, it is not easy to be a producer. I'm having a better time now because the show that I did a couple of years ago, Good American Family on Hulu, was very successful and we worked our butts off to make sure that it was successful. So now, you know, I put some points up. So I'm getting a few more minutes in the game.

What does meaningful collaboration look like to you? Like, what are the pieces that you want to come together for you to say, yes, this is the team that I want to work with.

I think a winning combination is confidence in your ideas, but also be willing to listen to someone else's ideas. And if it's a good idea, give them credit and say, that's a good idea. We should try that.

Is there anything that you wish that someone had told you at the beginning of your career that you now look back and say, oh, if someone had just said this to me, it would have changed a lot?

I don't Love, regrets. And I don't really have any, but if I had to say one thing to answer your question, because you're Soledad.

O', Brien.

I would say I wish someone told me to have more fun.

That's so interesting.

In the beginning of Grey's, you know, we did have a lot of fun, but there was also a lot of pressure and a lot of drama and a lot of different dynamics that you've never experienced before. So it's hard not to get swept up in it. And fame and the public eye is intense. And I'm not gonna say I didn't enjoy it. Of course I did. But maybe I would have tried to enjoy it a bit more. That would really be it. But every lesson I've learned, every time I've fallen down and had to get back up and been embarrassed or humiliated or whatever, you know, felt like a gut punch, it's made me who I am today, which is a thoughtful person. So I don't regret any of it. And it's okay that no one gave me. People have given me good advice, of course, along the way, but I think you learn your best lessons when you learn them yourself.

I was going to say, I wonder if that means that your advice to young actors coming up in their first gigs is the same thing of, like, have fun. But a lot of these lessons you're going to have to learn yourself.

It's really hard. There's a few young actors that I've tried to mentor, and the business is really in a bad place right now, so it's really hard to give positive advice. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, TV news as well, so it's a challenge. But I love the idea of enjoy the ride, because no one ever gives you that advice, and you don't wanna look back and think, oh, there's so many interesting things that you got to do, and you forgot to be in the moment and enjoy it.

Mm. Yeah. I mean, being an actor, you're trained to be in the moment, but sometimes the moment's terrifying.

I love it. Ellen Pompeo, we are such big fans of you and Meredith Gray, by the way, and we love everything you do. Thank you. It's such an honor. Honor and a pleasure to chat with you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Appreciate it.