Ellen Pompeo Was 'Salty' That Patrick Dempsey Was Paid More on Grey's Anatomy but Admits He Did 'Deserve' It

Ellen Pompeo is looking back at her feelings after learning that her former Grey’s Anatomy costar Patrick Dempsey was initially paid more than her.

On the latest episode of Call Her Daddy, the 55-year-old actress — who stars as the titular character Meredith Grey — admitted that while she understood why Dempsey, 59, would’ve been offered more money at the time, she still found it hard to accept.

“To be completely fair, the television game was so different then. He had done 13 pilots before me…” Pompeo recalled. “Nothing personal to him, just in general, only a man can have 13 failed TV pilots and their quote keeps going up, right? But in all fairness, his quote was what it was.”

“He was a bigger star than I was at that point. No one knew who I was,” she said while noting that it was her first TV pilot. “Everybody knew who he was, so he did deserve that money.”

However, the Good American Family star felt as the “namesake of the show” that she “deserved the same and then that was harder to get.”

“I wasn't salty about him getting what he got,” she explained. “I was salty that they didn't value me as much as they valued him and they never will.”

Pompeo went on to negotiate a $20 million salary for her role on Grey’s Anatomy in 2018, but not before talking with creator Shonda Rhimes.

“Being a woman, I guess I’m conditioned to make sure that I’m not stepping on anybody’s toes and I’m being polite…” she revealed on the podcast. “I asked Shonda first. She doesn’t really have much to do with that stuff, it’s business affairs and whatever but I said to her, ‘I’m going to go in and ask for this much, are you cool with that?’” 

She continued, “Just because I don’t want to be disrespectful to her, I don’t want to come off crazy and I want to let her know what moves I’m making because I do respect her. I am grateful to her.”

The actress noted that she knew what she deserved before the salary negotiation began.

“I am the Disney princess of that franchise,” she said. “I have this sort of data to back [it] up, I know the show generated this much money I definitely deserve a percentage of that,” she said. “I definitely deserve a percentage of that.”

“I advocate for women always fighting for themselves because most likely they are getting undervalued compared to what they’re offering men,” she added.

Back in 2018, Pompeo told PEOPLE that she understood the negotiations might not go in her favor.

“I had [Shonda’s] support and I had the courage to do it and I was also completely willing to walk away,” she explained. “I was ready for it to not go my way, that’s the most important thing. It might not go your way, you’ve got to be okay with that.”

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Grey's Anatomy airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.