Ellen Pompeo Lands Her Next TV Role Amid Surprise Cast Exits on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

For twenty years, she was the heart of Grey’s Anatomy. The face of the franchise. The woman whose voice opened every episode, whose journey from dark and twisted intern to groundbreaking surgeon defined an entire generation of television. Ellen Pompeo didn’t just play Meredith Grey — she was Meredith Grey, inseparable from the character who made her a household name.

But every story has a turning point. And Meredith Grey’s final scene — boarding a plane to Boston with her three children — was never going to be the end of Ellen Pompeo’s story. It was just the beginning of a new one.

On June 4, Deadline confirmed that Pompeo, now 56, has booked her next major television project. She will star in and executive produce a new Hulu series titled Chicks — a family comedy-drama that represents a bold departure from the trauma-filled halls of Grey Sloan Memorial. The project was born from an original idea by writer Katie Robbins, who developed the concept with Pompeo specifically in mind. The two had been working together on Hulu’s Good American Family, and the conversations they shared on that set planted the seeds for something entirely new.

Chicks takes place in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods of Old Boston — a city where history and money are colliding, where the old working-class world is being bulldozed to make room for the new. And at the center of this changing landscape are two women: Chicky, played by Pompeo, and Dorene, her estranged half-sister. Both are barely keeping their heads above water, struggling to survive in a city that no longer belongs to them.

Then their wise-guy father dies unexpectedly.

And everything changes.

Their inheritance isn’t money. It isn’t property. It’s a legacy of two-bit crime — small-time schemes, petty frauds, the kind of half-baked hustles their father played his whole life. But Chicky and Dorene, thrown together by grief and desperation, realize that this worthless inheritance might actually be worth something. They start running cons. Small at first. Then bigger. Then increasingly audacious, pushing the boundaries of what two desperate women can get away with.

And here’s the beautiful irony: as their frauds grow more elaborate, so does their bond. Two strangers connected only by blood and bad luck begin to fill the father-shaped hole in each other’s hearts. The cons become a shared language. The lies become a shared history. And somewhere in the middle of all the deception, something real starts to grow.

Production on Chicks is expected to begin in September in New York — a fresh start, a new city, a全新的 chapter for an actress who has spent the better part of two decades inside the same hospital walls.

But here’s what makes this announcement so layered with tension.

Pompeo’s next chapter arrives at a moment when Grey’s Anatomy fans are holding their breath. Season 23 is approaching, and the question on everyone’s mind is simple: who stays, and who goes? Major exits have already been announced. The cast is shifting. The foundation is trembling. And now, the woman who was the show is officially moving on to something new.

Not entirely, though. Pompeo has made that clear.

When she confirmed in September 2022 that she would be reducing her role for Season 19, she didn’t sugarcoat it — but she also didn’t close the door. “I’m going to always be a part of that show,” she told Deadline. “I’m an executive producer. I spent two decades of my career on Grey’s Anatomy. It’s my heart and soul. I’ll never truly be gone as long as it’s on the air.”

She starred in eight episodes that season before stepping away as a series regular in 2023. Her farewell was characteristically understated — Meredith telling her friends and colleagues, “I’m only going to Boston, and you know, I’ll probably be here next week,” before boarding a plane with her children. It wasn’t a goodbye, not really. It was an I’ll see you soon.

And now, with Chicks on the horizon, that promise feels even more important. Because Ellen Pompeo isn’t leaving television behind. She’s expanding her territory. The woman who built a career out of playing a surgeon is now stepping into a world of con artists and half-sisters and gentrified Boston streets. It’s a transformation that feels as daring as it does inevitable.

The question that remains — for fans who have followed her for two decades — is simple: how much of Grey’s will she still be part of when Season 23 rolls around? Will Meredith Grey make a return visit? Will Pompeo’s presence as an executive producer keep the show tethered to