Ellen Pompeo on working motherhood: ‘You can’t give 100% to your job when you’re a mom’

Ellen Pompeo didn’t just play a working mom on Grey’s Anatomy—she lived it. On the March 19, 2025 episode of Call Her Daddy, the actress who made Meredith Grey iconic got real about what it’s like to balance motherhood and career in a world that still expects women to do it all—and smile while they’re at it.

Pompeo, now 55, joined Alex Cooper for a wide-ranging conversation about money, motherhood, and power. And yes, she brought the heat.

“You can’t give 100% to your job when you’re a mom. But that’s the point.”

When Cooper asked Pompeo how she navigated motherhood while filming one of the longest-running medical dramas in history, Pompeo gave credit where it was due: to Grey’s creator Shonda Rhimes.

“Her best quality as a boss? That’s so easy,” Pompeo said. “When you tell her you’re pregnant, she literally sounds the bell, the confetti comes down. ‘How many days do you need off? What can we do for you? How do we make this easier for you?’”

Rhimes helped adjust Pompeo’s schedule so she only needed to film one day a week after becoming a mom. She also supported Pompeo through her fertility journey, which included welcoming daughter Sienna May (10) and son Eli Christopher (8) via surrogacy, after giving birth to her eldest, Stella, in 2009. 

Pompeo said that kind of support allowed her to have a really full home life as an actor—something she might not have had if she’d taken a different, more creative path.

Still, she got candid about the toll and transformation of motherhood: “You cannot be a mother and have children and give 100% to your job. You can’t… But you know what that does? It makes you more soulful… you will just be a better version of yourself.” And then came the mic drop: “But that’s only a plus. It makes you richer. It makes you more soulful. You will be yourself times a thousand.”

“I didn’t feel maternal at all.”

Pompeo also opened up about how becoming a mom wasn’t always on her radar. “I didn’t feel any maternal anything, really,” she admitted, sharing that her own mother died of an accidental overdose when she was just four. It was her husband, music producer Chris Ivery, who first pushed for parenthood. “I was like, you kind of should have asked me this before we got married,” she joked.

Still, she agreed to try—and told herself if she didn’t love it, she’d stop at one. But that’s not what happened. “My heart broke open and it changed my life forever,” she said. “I evolved into a completely different person.”

Related: A guide to surrogacy: What intended parents need to know

Why Pompeo stayed on Grey’s for so long? Power. And a paycheck.

Pompeo also opened up about the dollars and cents of being a working woman in Hollywood. She revealed she re-signed her Grey’s contract at 40 because she feared that was the end of her shelf life in Hollywood: “20 years ago, 40? That’s a wrap, honey.”

She saw staying not as a fallback—but as a power move rooted in financial freedom. “For women, financial freedom is true independence,” she said. “You don’t have to be with any man you don’t want to be with. You get to choose.”

Pompeo said she had to fight to earn her $20 million salary—and to prove she was worth it. “My manager at the time said something to me that literally hit me like a brick. He said, ‘How are you—are you ready to be unpopular?” she recalled. “Not everybody is going to be happy for you.”

But she kept her eye on the bigger goal: “When you make a lot of money as a woman, you have power. So then how can I take that power and do good with it? How can I lift up someone else?”

Related: My birth story: Surrogacy made me a mother

The system’s still broken—but she’s helping fix it.

Pompeo’s candid commentary reveals just how far we still haven’t come when it comes to supporting mothers in the workplace. Yes, she had an extraordinarily supportive boss and a rare gig that allowed her to stay in one place, close to her kids. But she knows that’s the exception—not the rule.

Most moms? They’re not being handed confetti when they get pregnant. They’re being handed pink slips, or quietly sidelined. They’re navigating a system that expects them to “bounce back” while pretending their children don’t exist during work hours.

Pompeo’s story is a reminder that with the right support—bosses who get it, policies that prioritize flexibility, and the freedom to choose our own path—mothers can be both powerful and present. But we need more than confetti. We need cultural and systemic change.

Because like Pompeo said, motherhood doesn’t make you less. It makes you more. And it’s long past time our society—and our workplaces—acted like it.

Want more? Ellen Pompeo’s full Call Her Daddy episode is available here. And for more on how American moms are still fighting for 21st-century support in a 1950s system, read Motherly’s piece: “It’s 2021, but for American mothers, it’s still the 1950s”.