LONG-RUNNING medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” will return for a 19th season even though its star Ellen Pompeo had recently declared that “it should end.”

Pompeo, 52, has played the show’s main character, Meredith Grey, since it first aired in 2005, and will continue to do so in the upcoming season. The role has reportedly made her one of the highest-paid actresses in U.S. television, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

In the latest season, she will be joined by Chandra Wilson and James Pickens Jr., the only other members of the original cast still working on the series. They play Miranda Bailey and Richard Webber, Grey’s fellow doctors in the show’s fictional Seattle hospital setting.

In an interview with news outlet Insider in mid-December, Pompeo had said: “I’ve been trying to focus on convincing everybody that it should end.

“I feel like I’m the super naive one who keeps saying, ‘But what’s the story going to be, what story are we going to tell?’ And everyone’s like, ‘Who cares, Ellen? It makes a gazillion dollars.’”

The mother of three, who is married to music producer Chris Ivery, told Entertainment Tonight in September last year that she had been “trying to get away (from the show) for years.”

Despite Pompeo’s sentiments, viewers have continued to follow avidly the lives of the show’s fictional surgeons through catastrophes and romantic entanglements.

In an announcement about the renewal of the series, Dana Walden, chairman of entertainment at Walt Disney Television, called “Grey’s Anatomy” a “true phenomenon, beloved by audiences around the world.”

However, it is unclear if season 19 will be the last for the medical drama created by superstar producer Shonda Rhimes.

(SD-Agencies)