Grey's Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo has revealed the storyline that she was "deeply against".
The actor has been fronting the medical drama for 20 years, and is open about how she won't be going anywhere any time soon.
In a new interview with Variety, Pompeo spoke about continuing to be invested in the show's quality and how Meredith Grey is written.
The actor referenced a two-parter from season 21 earlier this year, where a character played by Lena Waithe is trying to get her wife a liver transplant.
Complications arise when it's discovered that Waithe's character had been concealing her wife's Alzheimer's diagnosis in order to secure a transplant, and Meredith reacts strongly.
"I don't always have a say in the choices the character makes," Pompeo said.
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"And writers will initially service a plot before they might stop to think, 'Would the Meredith Grey that [I] built – would she make that choice?' I recently had this happen this past season where I was deeply against a choice that Meredith was making.
"My problem with that storyline was the Meredith Grey that I've created would have always been like, 'I'm pissed that you lied, [but] let's figure out how to game the system together to get you this f**king liver. F**k the system. The system is broken'.
"Instead, Meredith chooses, for some reason, to be mad and snitch and tell UNOS [United Network for Organ Sharing] and tell the board that she lied and that she shouldn't get the liver – when Meredith has subverted the system for 20 years to do the right thing.
"She's done free surgeries, whatever it takes, to actually heal and help people."
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Pompeo admitted that she had an emotional outburst before she came to understand that the two-parter was an establishing character moment for Scott Speedman's Dr Nick Marsh rather than for Meredith.
"I think at the end of the day, Meg [Marinis], who's the showrunner, Debbie [Allen, director] and Shonda [Rhimes, creator] all recognize that all of my outspokenness about the creative on the show is all out of a place of caring deeply about the show.
"I see my job as trying to keep Shonda Rhimes' legacy as good and solid as we can, and the minute you stop caring or phoning it in or getting lazy, we're not really doing what we've been paid to do."
Grey's Anatomy season 21 airs on Thursdays at 10pm ET on ABC in the US. Previous seasons are streaming on Disney+ in the UK.
Read more Grey's Anatomy news on our dedicated homepage
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
