Don't expect Ellen Pompeo to buy Patrick Dempsey a Christmas present this year. According to the Grey's Anatomy star's new interview on Jada Pinkett Smith's Red Table Talk, she and Dempsey have not spoken in years.
However, just because the two don't have weekly catch-up chats doesn't mean Pompeo has anything negative to say about the man who portrayed Dr. Derek Shepherd — aka "McDreamy" — for 11 seasons.
In a Monday episode of the Facebook Watch series, the real-life Meredith Grey got candid about her relationship with her former co-star.
"We haven't spoken since he's left the show," Pompeo revealed to the Red Table Talk hosts, which also includes Willow Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris. "I have no hard feelings toward him. He's a wonderful actor, and we made the best TV you can make together."
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Pompeo and Dempsey portrayed the Shonda Rhimes' series most iconic on again, off again couple. Tragically, the pair was very much on (and married) when Dempsey's character was killed in a horrific accident during season 11, in 2015.
After fan backlash, creator Rhimes explained that the decision to kill off Derek stemmed from Dempsey's choice to leave the show.
"Either Derek was going to walk out on Meredith and leave her high and dry, and what was that going to mean? That was going to suggest that their love was not true — that the thing we said for 11 years was a lie, and McDreamy wasn't McDreamy, and that was untenable," Rhimes explained during a Television Critics Association panel in 2015. "Meredith and Derek's love had to remain Meredith and Derek's love."
Pompeo previously spoke about her relationship with Dempsey in a candid essay for The Hollywood Reporter, pegged to her massive salary bump for future seasons of Grey's Anatomy. She explained that it wasn't until Dempsey left the series that Pompeo could truly negotiate a real raise.
"[The producers] could always use [Dempsey] as leverage against me — 'We don't need you; we have Patrick' — which they did for years," wrote Pompeo in her THR cover story.
Still — don't take that as part of the reason these two have not spoken. As Pompeo explained on Red Table Talk:
"Typically when people leave the show, they need to sort of re-find themselves, who they are, without the show, because the show takes up so much of your life. You need that time to figure out who you are without the show."
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She added:
"So, we have not spoken but I will always have a place in my heart for Patrick."
Just as we'll always have a place in our heart for the fallen Dr. McDreamy.
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