Ellen Pompeo Yelled At Denzel Washington Once Which I’m Pretty Sure Is Illegal

Washington directed an episode of Grey's Anatomy, the show you probably forgot was still on television

By Shannon Melero  |  September 30, 2021 | 3:00pm
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Ellen Pompeo Yelled At Denzel Washington Once Which I’m Pretty Sure Is Illegal
Image:Valerie Macon (Getty Images)

Ellen Pompeo has been on Grey’s Anatomy long enough that her assertion it’s basically her show is absolutely correct. Her feelings, however, were not made abundantly clear to Denzel Washington who was invited to direct an episode of the long-running series. According to HuffPost, Pompeo and Washington had a heated exchange while filming the episode “The Sound of Silence” in 2016. While filming a scene Pompeo ad-libbed a line and she says Washington, “went ham on my ass.”

“He was like, ‘I’m the director. Don’t you tell him what to do,” to which Pompeo recalls responding, “Listen, motherfucker, this is my show. This is my set. Who are you telling? Like you barely know where the bathroom is.” What I really want to know is what lazy PA failed to point out the location of all the bathrooms to Denzel Washington?

Pompeo says the two didn’t speak for a while after snapping at each other for the sake of their art but have since smoothed things out. The real moral of the story here is that yelling at your director works out sometimes if you do it with conviction and fearlessness in your heart and also if you’re white.