Ellen Pompeo has a newfound appreciation of early Grey's Anatomy, says cast members weren't given scripts for Alex Karev's farewell

Variety

"It was beautifully done," Pompeo says of the goodbye episode to Karev, in a wide-ranging interview with Variety. "The writers did a fantastic job. We didn’t get to read that script. We all filmed our parts not having read it. We did not know because they wanted to be very confidential about that story line, and they didn’t want it to leak or get out. We all just read our parts on the day when we showed up. Debbie Allen directed it and she said, 'You’re going to be doing this.' I have to say, when I watch that episode and I see those early days of the show, I typically don’t watch the show. It’s too much. I film it, I live it, I’m too critical of myself. The show back then was just so, so, so, so good. I wish we had an appreciation for it then about how good it was. I don’t think we did, I don’t think any of us did. There was too much shit going on. It was too big, it was too hot, it was too fast and there was just so much going on in the beginning. It was more attention and more work than any of us had ever experienced or done in our life."