Ellen Pompeo says Grey's Anatomy might end this season...

[TMC]

, blames long hours on set for actors' bad behavior

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/gre...on-1234816801/

“We don’t know when the show is really ending yet,” says Pompeo, who is in the last year of her contract, in a Variety cover story on the Shonda Rhimes medical drama. “But the truth is, this year could be it.” She adds: “I’m constantly fighting for the show as a whole to be as good as it can be. As a producer, I feel like I have permission to be able to do that. I mean, this is the last year of my contract right now. I don’t know that this is the last year? But it could very well could be.” Pompeo also admits there was, early on, "a lot of drama on-screen and drama off-screen, and young people navigating intense stardom for the first time in their lives. I think that a lot of those actors, if they could go back in time and talk to their younger selves, it would be a different thing. Everybody’s grown and changed and evolved — but it was an intense time.” Pompeo says that the coronavirus pandemic should serve as a wake-up call that long hours hurt the actors. “Nobody should be working 16 hours a day, 10 months a year — nobody,” she says. “And it’s just causing people to be exhausted, pissed, sad, depressed. It’s a really, really unhealthy model. And I hope post-COVID nobody ever goes back to 24 or 22 episodes a season...It’s why people get sick. It’s why people have breakdowns. It’s why actors fight! You want to get rid of a lot of bad behavior? Let people go home and sleep.”