Ellen Pompeo Got ‘Frustrated’ by ‘Grey’s’ for Not Letting Meredith ‘Figure Out How to Make a Relationship Work’: She Can ‘Stop Making Bad Decisions’

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Paul McCartney announced on BBC’s “Best of Today” radio show that he relied on artificial intelligence to create “what will be the last Beatles record.” The track, set to debut later this year, features vocals from McCartney and the late John Lennon, who died in 1980. “It was a demo that John had that we worked on, and we just finished it up, it’ll be released this year,” McCartney said. “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this A.I., so then we could mix the record as you would normally do. It gives you some sort of leeway, so there’s a good side to it, and then a scary side, and we’ll just have to see where that leads.”

Ellen Pompeo might star in Grey’s Anatomy, but she isn’t quite down for revisiting her earliest seasons on the show in the present.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director When it came to designing and creating the costumes for Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” movie, the focus was put far more on Margot Robbie’s eponymous doll than it was on Ryan Gosling’s Ken. As the film’s costume designer, Jacqueline Durran, recently told Vogue UK, “No one cares about Ken, everybody just wants to play with Barbie. He matches Barbie and changes too but he has very, very, many less [clothes] options.” Durran, who won an Oscar for her costume designs on Gerwig’s “Little Women” adaptation, said colorful ’80s sportswear was the key to Ken’s looks in the movie. “Retro sportswear is one area where we did a lot of shopping for Ken,” Durran said. “He is sporty. That’s his main thing. We had buyers in America that went to dealers and imported it for us because we needed so much of it.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Kristin Davis recently told The Telegraph that she will not waste energy on the drama surrounding Kim Cattrall and “Sex and the City.” Variety exclusively reported in May that Cattrall would appear in the second season of Max’s “Sex and the City” sequel series “And Just Like That” in a cameo role. The announcement was something of a bombshell for “Sex and the City” fans, as Cattrall publicly announced in 2016 that she was done playing her character, Samantha, when she didn’t feel like the script for a proposed third film did justice to the character. Her decision to step away from Samantha led to a public fallout with Sarah Jessica Parker, who continues to play Carrie Bradshaw on “And Just Like That.”

Ellen Pompeo thought it would be a lovely idea: introduce Grey’s Anatomy to her 12-year-old daughter, Stella, and bond by re-watching the show that launched her career. But just a few episodes into binging reality set in — she couldn’t stomach it.

During his second appearance at France’s iconic Le Mans 24-hour race, Michael Fassbender crashed the Porsche 911 he was driving on Sunday, cutting short his stint behind the wheel. Fassbender was not injured according to local media and was able to get the car back to the pits before it was officially retired, Eurosport reported.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Elizabeth Olsen is currently on a break from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and she’s definitely enjoying it. During a conversation with “The White Lotus” star Meghann Fahy as part of Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series, Olsen got honest about not missing her Scarlet Witch days. “Do you miss doing Wanda?” Fahy asked. “No, I don’t,” Olsen responded. “I think it’s been almost 10 years of playing her. And I’ve loved it. And I think the reason why I am not calling Kevin Feige every day with ideas is because I’m really proud of what we were able to do. I think ‘WandaVision’ was a really surprising opportunity.”

Ellen Pompeo thought it would be a lovely idea: introduce  to her 12-year-old daughter, Stella, and bond by re-watching the show that launched her career. But just a few episodes into binging reality set in — she couldn't stomach it.Pompeo shared that tidbit with Katherine Heigl during their one-on-one interview for 's «Actors on Actors» series.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Long before Margot Robbie boarded the “Barbie” movie and got Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach to write the screenplay, it was Amy Schumer who was set to headline the project. Back in 2016, Sony Pictures had the rights to “Barbie” and cast Schumer to star in a movie based on an original idea and screenplay by Hilary Winston. Schumer and her sister, Kim Caramele, planned rewrites, but the comedian exited the movie less than a year later. “Sadly, I’m no longer able to commit to Barbie due to scheduling conflicts,” the actor said in a statement to Variety at the time. “The film has so much promise, and Sony and Mattel have been great partners. I’m bummed, but look forward to seeing Barbie on the big screen.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director What superhero fatigue? “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” blasted past projections and opened to a huge $120 million. The animated multiverse epic has already earned over $230 million worldwide in less than a week of release. With the “Spider-Verse” sequel off to a massive start and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” about to cross $800 million worldwide, it appears comic book movies are back on track after box office disappointments like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “Shazam: Fury of the Gods.” In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, “Spider-Verse” producers and writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller said “superhero fatigue” is not to blame for certain comic book movies falling below expectations.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Bryan Cranston has a plan for his Hollywood career to come to a brief end in 2026 so that he can spend more time with his wife, Robin Dearden. The Emmy winner announced the plan in a new GQ UK interview, saying he will take at least six months off from Hollywood and move to France in 2026. As reported by GQ: “In 2026, one of the greatest actors of this era will retire – at least temporarily. Cranston is planning to shut down his production company, sell his half of Dos Hombres, and abscond with Dearden to a foreign country, probably France, for a minimum of six months.” “I want to change the paradigm once again,” Cranston told the publication. “For the last 24 years, Robin has led her life holding onto my tail. She’s been the plus one, she’s been the wife of a celebrity. She’s had to pivot and adjust her life based on mine. She has tremendous benefit from it, but we’re uneven. I want to level that out. She deserves it.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director The name Preston Mutanga might not ring a bell, but anyone who has contributed to the $235 million and counting box office haul for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” has seen his work on the big screen. Mutanga is a 14-year-old from Toronto, Canada, who landed a role as an animator on “Across the Spider-Verse” after he recreated the film’s trailer shot-for-shot in the style of LEGO blocks and left producers Chris Lord and Phil Miller dazzled (via The New York Times). Not too bad for your industry debut. Mutanga uploaded his LEGO remake of the “Across the Spider-Verse” trailer to Twitter on Jan. 2 (see the post below). Lord and Miller, both active Twitter users, caught wind of the clip and were impressed — the directors know a thing or two about crafting LEGO-inspired sequences as the directors of 2014’s “The LEGO Movie.” When the team decided they wanted a scene in “Across the Spider-Verse” set in a LEGO universe, they decided to reach out to Mutanga.

Grey’s Anatomy almost wasn’t Grey’s Anatomy.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director It turns out The Terminator is no match for James Cameron. In Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new Netflix documentary “Arnold,” the actor and Cameron remembered clashing over the iconic “I’ll be back” line from 1984’s “The Terminator” (via Insider). “Sometime in the middle of the shoot, we’re doing this police station scene. The line is, ‘I’ll come back.’ It wasn’t meant to be like a big moment at all,” said Cameron, who co-wrote “The Terminator” with Gale Anne Hurd. “It was literally meant to be, on its face, ‘No problem, I’ll come back.’ For some reason, Arnold didn’t say, ‘I’ll come back.’ I said, ‘Well, just say “I’ll be back.” Keep it simple.'”

The city is about to get a little more crowded with the return of Samantha Jones!

Former “Grey’s Anatomy” co-stars Ellen Pompeo and Katherine Heigl are together again — not in Seattle’s Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, mind you, but in a new joint interview for Variety.

It’s the reunion we’ve all been waiting for!

Katherine Heigl and Ellen Pompeo sat down together for the first time in eight years to talk all things "Grey's Anatomy" and how their lives have evolved since. The hit ABC drama has been airing since 2005, making it the longest-running scripted primetime show for the network. "Grey's Anatomy" was renewed for a 20th season in March.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Steven Spielberg has always been a father figure to Drew Barrymore, but he actually said no when Barrymore asked him to be her real father during the making of their 1982 classic “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” Barrymore was only 7 years old at the time. In a new Barrymore profile published by Vulture, Barrymore praised Spielberg as “the only person in my life to this day that ever was a parental figure.” He eventually agreed to be her godfather. Barrymore’s own father, the actor John Drew Barrymore, was an abusive alcoholic. “Talk about someone who was not a careerist,” Barrymore said. “He was like, ‘I will burn this fucking dynasty to the ground.’”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Debra Messing revealed during “The Magic of Will & Grace” panel at The Paley Center for Media that she was instructed to “have big boobs” during her first costume fitting for the NBC sitcom (via People magazine). The Emmy winner pushed back on the suggestion, only to be told that it was coming straight from the top network executive. “The very first fitting, they had the chicken cutlets to make me bigger,” Messing said. “I just wasn’t a fan of like the whole idea of it. I was like, ‘You know what? I don’t need that.’ And they’re like, ‘Well, it’s the president of the network [saying this].’ And I said, ‘If he wants it, then he needs to come here and tell me to my face.'”

Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series.The pair’s interview, which went live Tuesday, most notably featured details about Heigl’s sudden departure from the hit drama, which, at the time, gave her a reputation for being “difficult.”“I was so naive,” admitted the “Firefly Lane” actress, who said onlookers often make her “the bad guy.” “I got on my soapbox and I had some things to say, and I felt really passionate about this stuff. I felt really strongly.

Katherine Heigl is speaking out about the controversy surrounding those interviews which led to her being labelled difficult.

Katherine Heigl and Ellen Pompeo have officially reunited!

When Ellen Pompeo sees Katherine Heigl before our photo shoot, she offers a greeting worthy of Barbra Streisand. “Hello, gorgeous!” Pompeo exclaims, giving Heigl a hug. And suddenly, it’s like no time has passed since “Grey’s Anatomy” premiered as a midseason replacement in 2005 — after ABC executives considered not airing the show at all — in the time slot after “Desperate Housewives.” Ultimately, these two women somehow not only surpassed the ladies of Wisteria Lane, they redefined pop culture. Throughout this reunion, we seriously take you back to the first days of TV’s longest running primetime medical drama. As “Grey’s Anatomy” became an overnight sensation, Pompeo and Heigl were launched into the stratosphere of fame together, for better and for worse. On the plus side, the Shonda Rhimes-created series revolutionized television, with women and actors of color leading the show. Yet the sudden, sometimes toxic attention — as well as spending those long days and nights on the infamously grueling set during the early years — taught both of them hard-won lessons. “If you cannot stand up for yourself in this industry, very few people will stand up for you,” Heigl says to Pompeo. “So you’d better learn how to, and you’d better be OK with them not liking you for it. ”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Black Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker revealed to Empire magazine that he went full “Black Mirror” by asking the artificial intelligence chatbot known as ChatGPT to write an episode of his beloved anthology series. The final results were “shit,” according to Brooker. “I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit,” Brooker said. “The first thing I did was type ‘generate “Black Mirror” episode’ and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is shit. Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of ‘Black Mirror’ episodes, and sort of mush them together. Brooker added, “If you dig a bit more deeply you go, ‘Oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.’ It’s [1970s impressionist] Mike Yarwood — there’s a topical reference.”

Ellen Pompeo and Katherine Heigl reunited for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” interview series, 13 years after the latter left “Grey’s Anatomy”.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director David Maisel might not be a name Marvel fans think of when they talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the entertainment executive recently stressed to The New Yorker that the “MCU wouldn’t exist” without him. Maisel is Marvel Studios’ former president and the initial architect of the MCU, which Kevin Feige has since taken the reigns of as the company’s current president. Feige’s name has become synonymous with Marvel’s success, which Maisel said has all but overshadowed his contributions. Or as Maisel put it, “It’s like a Thanos snap.” “Most people right now think Kevin started the studio,” Maisel said. “They don’t know me at all.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Zack Snyder revealed at the start of 2023 that his Netflix space epic “Rebel Moon” would be split into two movies. But Snyder is actually making four movies, sort of. In a Vanity Fair first look at “Rebel Moon,” Snyder announced that each “Rebel Moon” movie is getting two separate cuts. One cut is a movie that “anyone can enjoy and watch,” and one cut will be more explicit and strictly for adults. “I think for fans of mine and people who are ready to take a deeper, harder dive, that’ll be fun for them,” Snyder said of the harder cuts. “Rebel Moon” was written as one movie, but Netflix became hesitant after Snyder delivered a 172-page draft. At that length, “Rebel Moon” would’ve clocked around three hours.

Ellen Pompeo and Katherine Heigl are saying «all the things we weren’t going to say» in their new one-on-one interview for 's «Actors on Actors» series.The former co-stars sat down with one another to discuss everything from their least-favorite iconic scenes from the hit medical drama, to the ABC executive who almost didn't put it on the air.And, of course, they get into Heigl's controversial exit from the show in 2010, with the actress admitting, «I would not trade anything for my 20s, but I absolutely had no idea who I was and what I wanted and who I was supposed to be and who to make happy.»Controversy around Heigl's role on the show started during the 2008-09 season, when the actress publicly announced that she wouldn't be submitting herself for consideration at that year's Emmy Awards, saying that she «did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination.»Tensions between Heigl and creator Shonda Rhimes continued to rise until March 2010, when they reached an agreement to immediately release her from her contract, making the Jan. 21 episode her final appearance on the show — until an unexpected cameo in season 16, in an episode marking Justin Chambers' departure from the show.In their sit-down, Heigl and Pompeo discuss how the show's overnight success thrust them into the spotlight, paving the way for intense emotions on set.«I think that gave me this confidence that was a false sense of confidence,» Heigl recalls.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director In Netflix’s upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary series “Arnold,” the actor and former California governor somewhat apologizes for groping women in the past (via Rolling Stone). Five days before the 2003 California governor election, the Los Angeles Times published a report in which six women accused Schwarzenegger of groping and humiliating them. Schwarzenegger said at the time the reports were “made-up” and he “never grabbed anyone,” though he also admitted he “behaved badly sometimes” in the past. “My reaction in the beginning, I was kind of…defensive,” Schwarzenegger now says in the three-part Netflix documentary series. “Today, I can look at it and kind of say, it doesn’t really matter what time it is. If it’s the Muscle Beach days of 40 years ago, or today, that this was wrong. It was bullshit. Forget all the excuses, it was wrong.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Captain America: New World Order” is now “Captain America: Brave New World.” Marvel Studios announced the title change for its upcoming fourth “Captain America” movie on social media alongside a first look photo of stars Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford on the film’s set. Marvel originally announced last July that “Captain America 4” would be subtitled “New World Order” and be released on May 3, 2024. The release date remains unchanged for the newly-titled “Brave New World.” Anthony Mackie stars in the title role, making “Captain America 4″ his first outing as the eponymous hero in a feature film. The actor got his start in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Falcon, but he took on the Captain America shield in the Disney+ series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” Chris Evans originated the role of Captain America in the MCU, but he exited the part in “Avengers: Endgame.”

Seriously overdue. Grey’s Anatomy‘s Ellen Pompeo and Katherine Heigl sat down for a frank discussion about their career for Variety‘s Actors on Actors, which debuted on Tuesday, June 6.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Christoper Nolan revealed to Empire magazine that he did something during the development of “Oppenheimer” that he’s never done before in more than two decades of making movies: He wrote a script in the first person. “There’s the idea of how we get in somebody’s head and see how they were visualizing this radical reinvention of physics,” Nolan said. “One of the things that cinema has struggled with historically is the representation of intelligence or genius. It very often fails to engage people.” When sending the finished “Oppenheimer” screenplay to his visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson, Nolan stressed to him that “we have to find a way into this guy’s head. We’ve gotta see the world the way he sees it, we’ve gotta see the atoms moving, we’ve gotta see the way he’s imagining waves of energy, the quantum world. And then we have to see how that translates into the Trinity test. And we have to feel the danger, feel the threat of all this somehow.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director In his upcoming memoir “Pageboy,” Oscar-nominated actor Elliot Page reveals he was once confronted by a homophobic actor at a birthday party in Los Angeles (via People magazine). The year was 2014, shortly after Page publicly came out as gay during a speech made at a Human Rights Campaign conference (“I’m here today because I am gay,” Page told the crowd). Page later came out as transgender in December 2020. As Page writes in a chapter aptly titled “Famous A–hole at Party,” an actor that he considered an “acquaintance” approached him at the party and said, “You aren’t gay. That doesn’t exist. You are just afraid of men.” Page writes the actor also threatened him by saying: “I’m going to fuck you to make you realize you aren’t gay.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Padma Lakshmi is exiting “Top Chef.” The reality show host announced on social media that “Top Chef” Season 20 will be her last run with the beloved Bravo cooking competition series. Lakshmi’s news arrives just a week before the Season 20 finale. “After much soul searching, I have made the difficult decision to leave ‘Top Chef,'” Lakshmi wrote in a statement. “Having completed a glorious 20th season as host and executive producer, I am extremely proud to have been part of building such a successful show and of the impact it has had in the worlds of television and food.” “After 17 years, many of the cast and crew are like family to me and I will miss working alongside them dearly,” she continued. “I feel it’s time to move on and need to make space for ‘Taste the Nation,’ my books and other creative pursuits. I am deeply thankful to all of you for so many years of love and support. Sincerely, Padma.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Harrison Ford is taking some responsibility for the tension that developed with Brad Pitt during the making of their 1997 thriller “The Devil’s Own.” The film, which notably marked the last directorial effort from Alan J. Pakula (“All the President’s Men,” “Klute”), earned mixed reviews but grossed $140 million worldwide. Ford has often said in past interviews that it was difficult filming “The Devil’s Own.” When Esquire magazine recently asked why, Ford said it was due to creative differences he had with Pitt. “Heh. Yeah, I remember why,” Ford said. “Brad developed the script. Then they offered me the part. I saved my comments about the character and the construction of the thing—I admired Brad. First of all, I admire Brad. I think he’s a wonderful actor. He’s a really decent guy. But we couldn’t agree on a director until we came to Alan Pakula, who I had worked with before but Brad had not.”