Ellen Pompeo Reveals a New Side in ‘Good American Family’

When the script for Good American Family came to Ellen Pompeo, she wasn’t sure about it.

Based on a true story, the limited series follows a Midwestern couple who adopt a Ukrainian child who has a rare form of dwarfism. But over time, they become suspicious that she is not a child at all and are concerned their lives are in danger. “I just thought taking this on would be a land mine,” Pompeo, the longtime star of Grey’s Anatomy, tells Vanity Fair. “This is a scary thing for me to even entertain because it’s intense stuff, and it deals with children and it deals with children who are neurodivergent and have disabilities. This just seems like really tricky stuff.”

Her agent agreed, but also pointed out that playing Kristine Barnett was exactly the sort of role Pompeo was searching for after starring as Dr. Meredith Grey on TV since 2005. “You’ve always been looking for something to show a completely different color than what you’ve been showing people for 20 years and this is it,” she remembers her agent saying. “So I said, ‘Okay, well, let’s dig in.’”

The eight-episode limited series, which will debut on Hulu on March 19 (the first two episodes will debut at once, and then an episode will be released each week after), centers on the twisted true-crime story of Kristine and her husband, Michael Barnett (played by Mark Duplass). They’re the parents of three sons and decide to adopt Natalia Grace (Imogen Faith Reid), a seven-year-old orphan with dwarfism. They soon become convinced that she is an adult pretending to be a child and that she’s attempting to harm their family. Eventually, they successfully petition the court to change Natalia’s birth certificate to state that she is 22 years old, then move her into her own apartment, before relocating to Canada with their biological children. The story made national headlines in September 2019 when the Barnetts were charged with neglect of a dependent. (Michael was acquitted of charges and Kristine’s charges were dismissed.)

It’s a story that seems too wild to be believed. At first, the series follows the Barnetts as they adopt Natalia Grace, then switches to Natalia’s perspective later in the show. By telling the story from more than one point of view, the series attempts to explore issues of perspective, bias, and trauma. Like many of the more recent true-crime series—such as Hulu’s The Act, The Girl From Plainville, and Candy—it’s impossible to know exactly how every event unfolded. While it is based on the true story of Natalia, Pompeo says the creators behind the series had to make their own storytelling choices in hopes of challenging the audience. “We’re coming up with our own version of what this story could have been, so this isn’t sort of a beat-for-beat of what their experience was,” says Pompeo. “It’s really what we do here, I guess, in Hollywood. We make entertainment that hopefully provokes thought, and we take a set of circumstances and put our spin on it.”

For Pompeo—who also serves as a producer on the series, which was created by showrunner Katie Robbins—taking on the complicated role of Kristine was a challenge that often left her wondering if she could pull it off. After such a long stint on Grey’s Anatomy, Pompeo admits she had a lot to prove. “There’s a tremendous amount of pressure on me,” she says. “Why would anybody believe that I could do anything other than play Meredith Grey, myself included?”

Natalia Grace’s story has been recently told in the docuseries The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, which began airing in 2023. But Pompeo chose to avoid watching the show as she prepared to play Kristine, instead seeking to understand her as a mother. Before adopting Natalia, Kristine was known for helping her autistic son thrive, despite doctors doubting it was possible. “I started with the version of Kristine that was at first someone who wanted to help her son. She threw everything she had heard from experts out the window and decided to take this project on herself,” says Pompeo, who adds that the show’s researcher provided her with hundreds of pages of research. “I started from the perspective of a mother’s love and what drives mothers to raise their children, to support their children, to do the almost impossible for their children. And that is something that I could relate to because I have three kids of my own.”

She also read and researched, and found the book Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon especially enlightening. Each chapter in the book centers on parents who are coping with different characteristics in their children, including deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, and schizophrenia. “The book asks the question: How ready are you to be a parent?” she says. “What happens when you don’t get the child that you had expectations of getting? And how do we respond to that? And I think that’s a fascinating question.”

Pompeo, who says she never reached out to the real Barnetts as part of her research (Michael Barnett sold his rights to the story for the series, but none of the real people were involved with production), had to go to some dark places when Kristine begins to claim that Natalia is not a child and attempts to get Natalia away from her family. “It was important for me as an actor to do something that I was afraid to do. It was important for me as an actor to play someone who is not necessarily the most likable person,” she says. “I have not done anything new in 20 years. I have to go all in, there’s no half-assing it. I have a lot to prove here.”

The actions Kristine takes against Natalia at times made days on set for Pompeo tough. She credits the cast, which includes Dulé Hill, Sarayu Blue, and Christina Hendricks, for their support, along with showrunner Robbins for creating a positive environment. “I was very agitated a lot on set,” she says. “I had to just get through it and then I could shake it off and find a different headspace, but I wasn’t always my best version of myself having to step into that emotion.”

Pompeo says she spent a great deal of time speaking with Robbins and executive producer Sarah Sutherland about her character’s motivations. “They’re really thoughtful, and you want really thoughtful, empathetic people to make sure that you don’t fuck it up,” she says. “I have to defend my character, and I can’t judge her, or I can’t go to these places.”

Pompeo hopes the series helps audiences look at other people’s lives more empathetically. The experience reminded her that she loves acting, no matter how challenging. “[Actors] have a bad reputation and rightly so,” she says. “We deserve it. We do get a little grumpy. But the actual acting piece of it—working with actors and creating and collaborating and hitting something just right—is really, really fun.”