Ellen Pompeo believed her $20 million annual salary on Grey’s Anatomy to be celebrated as a win for equal pay, but was warned before her 2018 Hollywood Reporter interview went live that not everyone would support her success. Pompeo highlights the double standard in how women’s earnings are scrutinized compared to men’s, while emphasizing the importance of using her financial power to uplift others.

When Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo confirmed she was being paid more than $20m a year for her work on the show, she hoped it would be celebrated as evidence of equal pay coming to Hollywood.

However, before The Hollywood Reporter interview—which revealed Pompeo’s $575,000 an episode income, plus a seven-figure signing bonus and equity points in the series estimated to be worth $13m—went live, Pompeo was warned by her manager that she may not get exclusively positive feedback.

At the time, Pompeo told the Reporter the deal had been struck as she took on the solo lead role of the medical drama, named after her character.

“I’ve finally gotten to the place where I’m OK asking for what I deserve,” Pompeo said at the time.

But in a recent podcast interview with Alex Cooper’s ‘Call Her Daddy’, Pompeo reflected that she hadn’t considered her success wouldn’t be celebrated by her peers.

She explained: “My manager said at the time something to me that literally hit me like a brick. He said: ‘Are you ready to be unpopular?’ He was like: ‘I don’t want you to think that everyone’s going to go in and cheer for you and clap for you and bow to you, and think you’re the dopest ever, cause there’s going to be a lot of people who are not happy for you.’

“That had never occurred to me … That was good prep for me because it’s true that not everybody—and other women have said [this] publicly—like generally it’s hard for people to celebrate other people if they have something that resembles something they want.”

Her sentiments were echoed by Cooper, who herself was subject to scrutiny when it was revealed she had signed at least a $60m contract to move her podcast from Barstool to Spotify.

Cooper again made headlines when her three-year deal with Spotify came to an end, and she signed a $125m deal with SiriusXM to bring her growing media empire—Unwell—to the new platform.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get comfortable with the number being out there,” Cooper said. “My first contract when the number was leaked, I was … so proud that people know because it stands for so much. But then you get this wave of negativity, and I say it all the time … that men just do not experience this level of scrutiny when it comes to money.

“You have Jeff Bezos and Elon and Trump and all of these men get to just fucking shit money in front of our faces and everyone thinks it’s hot and powerful. And then the minute we get any of it—not even in the ballpark, we’re just lightly getting a part of the conversation—it’s like: ‘She doesn’t deserve that. Either she’s a bitch, she’d found a way to maneuver it cause she”s not worth that. And it’s a lot.”

Pompeo added: “It’s patriarchy and it’s misogyny.”

A network of power

It seems Hollywood is no different from the myriad of other industries that have a gender pay gap—in 2019, a study found that female stars, on average, earn $1.1m less than their male co-stars of similar experience.

Not only was Pompeo defying the norm by revealing her income, but she was also bucking the trend by being so highly paid as a woman.

And she’s keen to make her influence count, she added: “What helps me is to … take myself out of it. When you make a lot of money as a woman, let’s face it, you have power. So how can I take that power and do good with it? How can I amplify someone else? How can I lift up someone else who doesn’t sit in the position of privilege that I sit in?”

Pompeo added that she doesn’t try to control the reaction of others and instead focuses on “using your power for good.”

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Backing up value with data is also a lesson Pompeo has learned and encouraged others to do the same.

She explained: “I don’t want anything that I don’t deserve, I don’t want anything that I haven’t worked for. The CAA (Creative Arts Agency) print out a report … and they let you know exactly how you move the needle.

“I see exactly how much Grey’s Anatomy makes for ABC Disney, I get to see the number. Then it’s my face, it’s my voice, I’ve done so much work promoting the show all over the world for the past 20 years …. I have the data to back [it] up. I know the show generated this much money, I definitely deserve a percentage of that.”

“It is challenging for women to advocate for themselves in different disputations and jobs because if you cannot quantity how what you do contributes to the income of that company, it’s harder to fight for yourself and say I deserve this.”

Ellen Pompeo says her $575,000-an-episode Grey’s Anatomy salary came with a warning from her manager that hit her like a brick