Meredith Grey is the original “pick me girl,” but it’s not a title Ellen Pompeo ever wanted for her Grey’s Anatomy character.
In her recent interview on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, Pompeo cited Meredith’s “Pick Me, Choose Me, Love Me” speech as one of the scenes she didn’t want to shoot on the ABChospital drama.
“There was a lot of stuff that I didn’t wanna do at the time,” Pompeo said. “I didn’t wanna say, ‘Pick me, choose me, love me.’ And to [creator Shonda Rhimes’] credit, she knew that was going to pop.”
In case you missed it, the pivotal scene comes in the Season 2 episode “Bring the Pain,” written Rhimes herself, as Derek (Patrick Dempsey) weighs his love triangle with Meredith and with estranged wife Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh).
“I’m sure she’s really great,” Mer says in that episode. “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.”
Reflecting on that scene on Call Her Daddy, Pompeo recalled, “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. 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.’”
Pompeo also talked about that scene in her Variety “Actors on Actors” conversation with former costar Katherine Heigl in June 2023. She revealed that she once caught her daughter and her friends calling someone a “pick me girl.”
“So I’m like, ‘What’s a pick me girl?’ So they were like, ‘You know, girls who are like pick me, choose me.’ And I’m like, ‘Uh, do you, uh, hello? Do you know who invented the pick me girl?’”
Another scene Pompeo didn’t want to shoot? Meredith’s attempted hookup with George (T.R. Knight) in Season 2.
“T.R. and I are such good friends, and we had to do a love scene, and we were both crying,” she said on Call Her Daddy. “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. And then 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
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
