As Ellen Pompeo pointed out when sitting down with former Grey’s Anatomy costar Katherine Heigl for Variety’s Actors on Actors conversation, she hasn’t said “a complete goodbye” to the ABC medical drama.
“I will be making some appearances hopefully next year, if I can find some time,” Pompeo said. “We’ve got an interesting story to tell.”
While Meredith’s daughter is attending school in Boston, the doctor is researching Alzheimer’s disease and the cause of it in an attempt to cure it — and despite her former colleagues advising against it, she shared her findings that it’s all built on a faulty premise with a donor. Richard (James Pickens Jr.) had warned her that speaking up could be damaging to her reputation, so the door is open for Grey’s to continue to explore that in Season 20, whether Pompeo is onscreen for all of that storyline or not.
At the time it was revealed that Pompeo would be taking on a reduced role (but continuing to narrate) in Season 19, it was also announced that she would be starring in a new limited series for Hulu. With the working title of The Orphan, it follows a Midwestern couple who adopts what they believe is an eight-year-old girl with a rare form of dwarfism, only to then question her story.
Work on that show will begin in September, Pompeo shared in her conversation with Heigl. “That’s going to be a very interesting role to play. I haven’t played another character in 18 years. That’s crazy — crazy town, crazy town,” she said. “And this one, it’s intense. It’ll be an interesting experiment for me to see. I’m super excited to do it. I love the team it’s been really fun to develop something new and we’re just going to cross our fingers and jump out of the plane and pull the chute and hope it opens.”
Right now, we don’t know yet when Grey’s Anatomy Season 20 will air, due to the writers strike. ABC has released its fall schedule, and it doesn’t include any new episodes of its scripted content. We’ll have to wait to see if that has any impact on whether Pompeo appears.
Grey’s Anatomy, Season 20, TBA, ABC
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
