Ellen Pompeo: We 'Have Not Decided' If This Is the Last Season of 'Grey's'

Ellen Pompeo revealed that the current season of 'Grey's Anatomy' could very well be the end — watch her new interview

Will Grey’s Anatomy return for season 18? Not even Ellen Pompeo knows. The show’s leading lady and executive producer revealed in a new interview that she really “can’t say” if the show will end with its current season.

“We honestly have not decided. We’re really trying to figure it out right now,” Pompeo, 51, said on the Sunday, February 28, episode of CBS Sunday Morning. “To end a show this iconic — how do we do it? I just wanna make sure we do this character and this show and the fans, I wanna make sure we do it right.”

Ellen Pompeo Says They Have Not Decided if This Is the Final Season of Greys Anatomy — Ellen Pompeo as Dr. Meredith Grey on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Gilles Mingasson/ABC/Kobal/Shutterstock

The actress admitted she doesn’t even know at this point if Meredith Grey is alive, as the character is still in a COVID-19 coma. “We don’t know. I’m in that ‘we'” she said in the interview. “We have choices.”

The Massachusetts native also noted that her agent had to convince her to join the show when she got the offer to do the pilot in 2005.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to be stuck on a medical show for six years. I don’t think I’ll be happy. I think I’ll be bored,'” the Golden Globe nominee recalled. Sixteen years later, she’s still leading the show. Now, Pompeo is one of the highest-paid actors on TV, raking in around $20 million a year, a salary she finally earned in 2018 after pushing for it with the network. “I had a very specific number that I can see what Grey’s Anatomy has generated. I can see exactly how much that show makes for one of the biggest corporations makes.”

For years, the Life of the Party actress has been asked about when the show will wrap, telling Us Weekly exclusively in 2018 that it may not be far off.

“We’re getting there. Shonda [Rhimes] and I will make that decision together,” she said at the time. “I think that one of the biggest lessons that this show has taught me and being on this show for so long has taught me, is that relationships do change. And they do grow. They take work. Like any marriage, friendship. You gotta put in the work. You have to accept other people’s flaws, and accept your own flaws and try to change and be a better person. But I think everything is worth the time and effort. And things get better.”

As for what comes after the show’s eventual end? “I can do anything I want or not do anything at all,” Pompeo said on Sunday.

Grey’s Anatomy returns on ABC Thursday, March 11, at 9 p.m. ET.