Ellen Pompeo Instagram – Although she’s one of the most recognizable faces on television, Ellen Pompeo felt as if the team behind “Good American Family” took a chance on her.
For nearly two decades, Pompeo starred in “Grey’s Anatomy” as the show’s namesake character Meredith Grey. But in 2022, Pompeo announced that she would be scaling back her appearances on the show to work on a new project that would become her first major role outside of the long-running medical drama.
That chance has come in the form of Hulu’s limited series premiering Wednesday that’s based on the real-life story of the Barnett family and Natalia Grace, a Ukrainian girl with a rare form of dwarfism. The Indiana family’s adoption of Natalia, subsequent abandonment of her and the charges that followed made headlines across the across country, later becoming the subject of the three-season Investigation Discovery docuseries “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace” and now @goodamericanfamilyhulu.
In the series, Pompeo stars alongside Mark Duplass, playing Kristine and Michael Barnett, the couple who adopted Natalia, played by Imogen Faith Reid. “Good American Family” is told from different points of view to illustrate the conflicting accounts of what happened between members of the family.
For Pompeo, stepping into her first post-”Grey’s” role was daunting, especially when it was a character as complicated as this one. “I didn’t know if I could do it,” she said. “I’ve done the same thing for 20 years. I didn’t know if I could do anything else. Why would anybody believe that I could?”
But Duplass, who said she expressed those worries to him when they first met up to discuss the project over a sushi dinner, helped put her mind at ease. He recalled her asking, “Am I going to be able to do this?”
“I’m like, ‘Of course you’re gonna be able to f— do this, but I love that you think you might not, because that makes me feel safe,” Duplass said.
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📸 @jrcmccord / For The Times; Ser Baffo / Disney | Posted on 20/Mar/2025 00:54:42
