Denzel Washington once worked behind the scenes of “Grey’s Anatomy” as a director on Season 12. Titled “The Sound of Silence,” the Washington-directed episode aired in February 2016 and saw Ellen Pompeo’s character (Dr. Meredith Grey) brutally attacked by a patient at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital (via Grey’s Anatomy Fandom).
While taping one scene from the episode, Pompeo yelled out a line that wasn’t included in the script, which didn’t sit well with Washington. “I was like, ‘Look at me when you apologize. Look at me,'” the actor told co-star Patrick Dempsey on the podcast “Tell Me with Ellen Pompeo,” via E! News. “Denzel went ham on my a**. He was like, ‘I’m the director. Don’t you tell him what to do.'”
Pompeo isn’t the one to back down, though. “I was like, ‘Listen, motherf****r, this is my show,'” she said. “This is my set. Who are you telling?” Despite the tense incident, the actor revealed that she has nothing but respect for Washington as a director and actor, and the two quickly patched things up. “So, we didn’t get through it without a fight, but that’s actors for you,” she continued. “Passionate and fiery and that’s where you get the magic, and that’s where you get the good stuff. So, it was an amazing experience, it really was.” Pompeo recently shared another theory on why actors tend to argue so much on set. Read below.
