Why Taylor Swift Wrote Ellen Pompeo the "Biggest Check" When They First Met

Ten years ago, Taylor Swift rounded up some of her favorite famous faces and got them all to appear in her music video for "Bad Blood", which was basically a short action film starring a bunch of kickass women. One of these women was Ellen Pompeo, who played "Luna". In a new interview on The Jennifer Hudson Show, Pompeo looked back on her time filming the video and praised Swift for her generosity when she asked the pop star for something in return.

"Taylor is such a good girl. I didn’t know her and she invited me to be in the video," Pompeo told Jennifer Hudson. "It was the easiest thing. It was like an hour or two."

Swift was already known to be a fan of Pompeo's show, Grey's Anatomy—she named one of her cats Meredith Grey after Pompeo's character. (Swift also has a cat named Olivia Benson after Mariska Hargitay's Law & Order: SVU character. Hargitay appeared in the video, too.)

Pompeo went on to explain that she and her husband, Chris Ivery, volunteer for Children's Hospital Los Angeles, so she decided to ask Swift for a donation for one of their programs.

"They have an amazing program at Children’s where they make music for the babies in the NICU," the mother of three explained. "And for the parents who have to go to work all day and they can’t be with the kids, they record their voices singing nursery rhymes or telling them stories, and they play it for the babies in the day when the parents can’t be there. The babies respond to it, and it increases their outcomes, makes their outcomes more positive."

Ellen Pompeo on 20 Years of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and Working with Taylor Swift - YouTube

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Pompeo continued, "It’s a really nice program, but they need money to run it. I just got up the chutzpah and asked Taylor, 'Could you write me a big old check for Children’s?' And she knew me all but 20 minutes and that girl wrote me the biggest check without blinking an eye."

Over the years, Swift has made headlines for some of her charitable donations, including to children's hospitals and other organizations that support kids. She's also made visits to children's hospitals. For instance, in December 2024, she surprised patients at Children's Mercy hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, as reported by the AP.

Aside from a check for Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Pompeo got something else out of her "Bad Blood" role: cool points from her kids.

"I do get a lot of points for that," the 55-year-old told Hudson. "That means so much milage, honestly with both of them, with both of the girls."