Elizabeth

Grey's Anatomy is named after Ellen Pompeo's character. For years, ABC still paid her male co-star, Patrick Dempsey, more. In the video below, Pompeo says what stung. "I was salty that they didn't value me as much as they valued him." She admits he was the bigger star. He had done about 13 TV pilots; Grey's was her first. "He did deserve that money," she says. But "only a man can have 13 failed TV pilots and their quote still keeps going up." "I was the namesake of the show," she says. "I deserved the same, and then that was harder to get." Her first contract ran out as she turned 40. Back then, she says, an actress of 40 was considered finished. So she re-signed: "This is the most money I'm ever going to make." Dempsey left the show in 2015. Pompeo's next deal paid $575,000 an episode plus a bonus, about $20 million a year. At the time, no actress in a TV drama earned more. When the number went public, her manager asked her: "Are you ready to be unpopular?" Women, she says, are "most likely getting undervalued compared to what they're offering men." So women should always push for more, she says. "All anyone can say is no." So did ABC pay Dempsey more for his experience, or for being a man?