MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross and her Saturday guests absolutely eviscerated Grey’s Anatomy star and producer Ellen Pompeo over an anecdote she shared about clashing with Denzel Washington when he directed an episode.

In the inaugural episode of her new podcast, Pompeo told how she had scoffed at the idea of Washington directing her show — “[he’s] a movie star, right? He doesn’t know shit about directing TV” — and then described how the two had argued when she didn’t like how an actor had performed during a scene with her, had told him to play the scene differently, and Washington had objected:

And Denzel went ham on my ass. He was like, “I’m the director. Don’t you tell him what to do!” And I was like, “Listen, motherfucker, this is my show. This is my set. Who are you telling?”

Like, you barely know where the bathroom is. And like, you know, I have the utmost respect for him as an actor, as a director, as everything. But like, yo, we went at it one day and then his wife came to set to visit. And I was like, I was not talking to him. I was mad at him. And I told his wife I was like, yeah, he yelled at me today. Yeah, he let me have it today. And I’m not OK with him and I’m not looking at him and I’m not talking to him.

Pompeo said later that she and Washington were “fine” after that, but Twitter users were absolutely not fine with her comments, sending her name trending with an avalanche of criticism.

Cross brought up the story with her guests, Gyasi Ross, Roland Martin, and Felice León, and the panel broke out into laughter the moment Pompeo’s name was mentioned, setting the scene for the brutal mockery to come over the next few minutes.

“I don’t think girlfriend was expecting the reaction that she got, but you know, she dangled out some fire and asked for all that smoke — I think it’s warranted,” said Cross.

Let me just say, I don’t think Ellen Pompeo would have ever spoken to Steven Spielberg the way that she did to Denzel Washington,” Cross continued, also expressing doubt that a similar situation would have happened with Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, or Debbie Allen.

León agreed with Cross and admonished Pompeo, “let’s start by saying what you’re not going to do is disrespect Uncle Denzel, okay?”

“You know, this is a typical case of a white woman, white womaning, right?” León continued, commenting that she was unswayed by the fact that Pompeo was married to a Black man, had Black children, or whether she had Black friends.

“This is not okay and Twitter called you out as they should have, said León. “You absolutely showed your supremacy, you absolutely showed your privilege, and this is exactly why, you know, we have to continue to call people out.”

Cross joked that Pompeo couldn’t have that many Black friends, because if she had, “somebody would have told her correctly, right?”

Martin replied that Pompeo was “completely wrong,” but this kind of thing “happens on Hollywood sets all the time,” mentioning other examples of on-set clashes.

This, however, was different, he continued, because Pompeo had claimed “this is my show, my set.” No, he said, it was series creator Shonda Rimes’ show, her set.

Martin was curious if Rimes had corrected Pompeo’s behavior, adding that she really needed more Black friends to tell her “baby, don’t tell that story.”

“Yeah, don’t do that,” Cross agreed.

“We can have drinks and we’re together, you can tell that story,” Martin said, “but I need all the white people in America to understand, you do not speak ill will against MLK, Idris [Elba], and Denzel.”

“You might want to just move long and tell that story privately, Ellen,” Martin concluded.

Cross went to Ross for a brief comment before the commercial break. “This is not the type of story you brag about,” said Ross. “I’ll just end with that.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

The post MSNBC Panel Eviscerates Ellen Pompeo Over Clash With Denzel Washington: ‘A Typical Case of a White Woman, White Womaning’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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