Ellen Pompeo says she's only watched a 'handful' of the 392 'Grey's Anatomy' episodes she's been in — and she's 'not even close' to remembering every one

• Ellen Pompeo said on her podcast that she's "not even close" to remembering every episode of "Grey's Anatomy."
• Pompeo has played the series' titular character Meredith Grey for 18 seasons, since 2005.

Ellen Pompeo said that she doesn't remember the vast majority of the "Grey's Anatomy" episodes that she's starred in, and hasn't "seen most of them."

In an episode of her podcast, "Tell Me with Ellen Pompeo," released on Wednesday, Pompeo told guest Martha Stewart that she's watched little of her 18-season run on the series. Pompeo has played the series' titular character, Dr. Meredith Grey, since its 2005 pilot episode. In that time, she's also directed two episodes of the series, Bustle reported.

"I have been doing ["Grey's"] — this is my 18th season, and it's 392 episodes," Pompeo told Stewart. When Stewart asked her if she remembered all of the episodes, Pompeo told her that she didn't — "not even close."

"I haven't really seen most of them, I've watched only a handful," Pompeo said on the podcast. "The few times I've directed, I've gone back and watched some old episodes. My intention is always to keep the spirit of the early days. That's really the hard work, is to try to keep that sort of DNA, which is hard but gives us a goal at least to strive for."

Pompeo previously told Insider in a November interview promoting her company Betr Remedies that she had likely only seen "six or seven episodes" of the series altogether — and from the show's first 10 seasons, only its pilot.

"The few episodes that I've seen have been really since the advent of social media," Pompeo told Insider.

Scenes from "Grey's Anatomy" have gone viral on platforms like TikTok. One season two sequence in which Pompeo's character Meredith begs her boyfriend Derek Shepherd to "pick me, choose me, love me" over his then-wife Addison is a popular TikTok audio that's been used in tens of thousands of videos, as is a different scene from the show's second season in which Sandra Oh's character Christina Yang screams, "somebody sedate me."

Pompeo previously said on her podcast that she was "horrified" by the "pick me" scene, and later discussed her reluctance to film it after her 12-year-old daughter, who came across it on TikTok.

"That scene in particular, isn't it interesting, right? How the times have changed. I didn't really like that scene when I did it back then. I didn't feel comfortable with it," she told Insider.

"Now it's so interesting, with the evolution of pop culture and evolution of culture — thank God we're seeing these things," Pompeo told Insider. "I only remember that scene so much from social media. I've never really gone back and watched the show."

"Grey's Anatomy" returns from its midseason hiatus on Thursday at 9/8c on ABC.