Everett homey: `Grey's' turns red-hot
By Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa
Friday, May 20, 2005
Attention ``Grey's Anatomy'' fans: Brace yourself for the season finale, because star Ellen Pompeo promises it's just what the doctor ordered - if you like prime time bombshells.
``There's a huge surprise coming,'' the Everett homegal told the Track. ``I can't divulge. I can't even touch on it. But get your bowl of popcorn ready, 'cause it's a doozy!''
Despite our best bedside manner, Dr. Meredith Grey wouldn't cough up the plot twist. But she did confirm the MD drama's denouement involves her character and her onscreen paramour, Dr. Derek Shepherd, played by the very delish Patrick Dempsey.
``It's about Patrick and I, definitely, and you have no idea it's coming,'' Ellen said. ``It's a fantastic way to end the show.''
Oddly, though, the hospital soap's season finale, which airs Sunday at 10 p.m. on ABC, was not how the first season was supposed to wrap. It is the 8th installment in a 12-episode arc, but because of the network's scheduling, the final four episodes will be shown next season.
``It's not how they originally filmed it, but it makes so much more sense this way,'' she said.
Pompeo, who had her breakout role in the 2002 made-in-Massachusetts drama, ``Moonlight Mile,'' said her ``angels in the sky'' helped her land the juicy lead role as a stressed-out first-year intern in a Seattle hospital. She had originally tested for a series in which she would play a female Secret Service agent.
``I read for the part and didn't get it,'' she said. ``But they sent me the script for `Grey's Anatomy' and said, `The lead is yours if you want it.' I read it and said, `Sign me up. Absolutely.' I'm a lucky girl.''
The series which took ``Boston Legal's'' place in the ABC Sunday-night lineup in March, has become the ninth-highest-rated show on TV. It's prime time's most successful replacement drama in 12 years.
The blonde actress, who has tons of local fans - most of them relatives - said she wished she had more time to spend back home with her dad, Joseph, a retiree who still lives in Everett and her sisters in Nahant and Swampscott, not to mention her ``buckets and baskets'' of nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and cousins.
At the moment, she's desperately trying to carve a few days out of her schedule to get to Martha's Vineyard before heading back to L.A. to shoot 22 more episodes of the show. Of course, when your day job means sucking face with Patrick Dempsey, you don't get a lot of sympathy!
``I have to say, with Patrick, I really, really lucked out,'' Ellen said. ``Male actors can sometimes be a little crazy, a little egotistical, a little full of themselves and he is so not any of those things. He is a down-to-earth East Coast boy from Maine. He's just a good egg and I'm so lucky to have him.''
And while her on-screen lovelife may need some intensive care, off-screen Ellen's doing just fine. She's dating music producer Chris Ivery, whom she met in a grocery store in L.A. The punchline is, he's from Cambridge.
``I had to go 3,000 miles away to meet a guy who practically grew up next door,'' she laughed. ``But I guess everything comes full circle.''