Ellen Pompeo is an American actress who has had a number of roles in a number of movies over the course of her career. However, she should be best-known to most people because of a TV role, seeing as how she plays the titular character Meredith Grey on Grey’s Anatomy. It is because of this role that Pompeo is now the highest-paid TV actress out there with at least $20 million on an annual basis.
How Did Ellen Pompeo Become the Highest Paid TV Actress?
For those who are curious, Pompeo has become the highest-paid TV actress for the reasons that most people would expect, which is to say, her TV show happens to be really, really popular. This can come as a surprise to people who don’t follow Grey’s Anatomy, but the series has been running since 2005 because it still has millions and millions of people who watch it on a regular basis. As a result, there is a lot of financial incentive for a lot of interested parties to keep the series running on the TV screen, as shown by Pompeo’s statement that it has managed to earn close to $3 billion for Disney so far.
With that said, there are other reasons as well. For example, Pompeo has stated that ever since Patrick Dempsey left the series, she has had more negotiating power because the other side can no longer use Dempsey’s character as leverage against her by positing him as a potential replacement in the status of the series’s main character. Besides, it should also be noted that Pompeo’s success in this regard is connected to her willingness to put up a fight for what she believes she deserves, which is not something that can be said for a lot of people in a wide range of jobs in a wide range of industries.
Does Ellen Pompeo Deserve to Be the Highest Paid TV Actress?
As for the question of whether Pompeo deserves to be the highest-paid TV actress, well, there is no reason to believe that she doesn’t. After all, her earnings are in line with the earnings of other lead actors on other super-successful TV shows. For example, each of the four male leads for The Big Bang Theory earned more than $20 million on an annual basis, though Jim Parsons is expected to pull away from the other male leads because of his involvement with the spin-off centered around his character as well. As a result, there isn’t an argument that can be made that Pompeo’s earnings are somehow out-of-line with the earnings of other people in the same profession at around the same level of success.
One could make an argument that Pompeo earns a lot more than all but a small number of the highest-paid TV actresses out there, but that says a lot more about the state of the industry than anything about her. Part of the problem seems to be a gap in how much actors and actresses are paid. However, it should also be noted that there seems to be a smaller number of lead female roles, which means a smaller number of actresses who can ever reach the top of the TV acting world.
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