Ellen Pompeo Opens Up About How Sandra Oh's Exit From 'Grey's Anatomy' Affected Her

Ellen Pompeo looked back on both Sandra Oh and Patrick Dempsey‘s exits from Grey’s Anatomy affected her.

The 51-year-old star chatted with Dax Shepard on his Armchair Expert podcast, saying that Sandra‘s exit weighed on her more than Patrick‘s exit did.

Ellen admitted that she had a fear about Sandra leaving and wondered if there even was “a show without Sandra?”

She added that if she had left along with Sandra, she worried about being typecast.

Ellen went on, saying, “Sandra is a different kind of actor. … You never doubt whether Sandra Oh is gonna work again, right? She’ll work forever, right? But for me, I had to think, Am I gonna work again? Or am I going to be so typecast?”

However, with Patrick‘s exit, Ellen was determined to stay and prove that she could carry the show without “the man”.

“I could’ve left because the man left, which is not a story that I want to tell. Like, ‘He’s not here anymore, so I have to go.’ So that story then becomes, ‘What can I do without the man?’ Because they had put that in my head for so long that I was no good without him,” she says.

Ellen adds that she stayed and one of the reasons was that she wanted “[to] prove to [herself] that they were wrong in all of the things they put into [her] head over all of those years.”

If you missed it, see what Ellen said about watching herself age on the hit drama series…