Ellen Pompeo says she was detained by TSA who called in bomb squad over her ‘expensive’ snack

‘Grey’s Anatomy’ star said security debacle nearly made her miss her flight

Ellen Pompeo said her “super expensive” and “fancy” snack triggered airport security to call in the bomb squad during a recent trip.

The Grey’s Anatomy star, 55, spoke about the debacle that happened just as she was preparing to board a flight in March in a new interview.

“I had a bag of sunflower seeds, like organic sunflower seeds from Erewhon, so they were probably the most expensive sunflower seeds money can buy,” Pompeo told Travel + Leisure.

“They literally held me for an hour, and they brought the bomb squad in,” she remembered. “And I was like, ‘What is happening? Is this a joke?’ They said it was most likely a chemical on the packaging of these super expensive, fancy, organic, clean sunflower seeds. My protein on the plane!”

She said that she had offered to toss her snack that she had purchased from Erewhon, the Los Angeles-based high-end grocery store chain, but was told she still needed to remain in custody until the bomb squad assessed the unopened package.

“I almost missed the flight,” she said. “It was really like no one would ever believe this! I was texting my publicist saying, ‘I might not get on this plane, and you're never gonna guess why.’”

Ellen Pompeo nearly missed her flight in March after her pricey snack of sunflower seeds triggered the security alarm (Getty Images)

Despite the fiasco, Pompeo told the outlet that she still loves to travel, and typically packs her on-flight necessities of “mints, glasses, water, hand sanitizer, and baby wipes.”

“I have to do the Naomi Campbell thing and wipe down the entire seat,” she revealed.

Asked which Grey’s Anatomy co-star she would choose to travel with, Pompeo, who led ABC’s long-running medical drama for over a decade before stepping back in 2022, answered: “Definitely T.R. [Knight]. Or Katie [Katherine] Heigl, because she’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s gonna be fine.’”

While Pompeo is no longer a regular cast member, she still makes the occasional appearance as Dr. Meredith Grey. She also provides the narration for each episode’s intro and outro.

ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.

ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.

In April, the Emmy-nominated actor disclosed why she hasn’t left the show for good, saying that it “would make no sense” for her to quit the show “emotionally or financially.”

“The show was streamed more than a billion times in 2024 — more than a billion times,” she told El País in April, adding: “The companies that own the show and stream the show make a lot of money from our images and our voices and our faces.

“If I were to walk away completely, everybody gets to make money from my hard work for 20 years and I wouldn’t make any money,” she claimed. “To me, it doesn’t make any sense that everybody [else] gets to profit off of my hard work. And emotionally, the show means a lot to people. I want to have an attitude of gratitude toward the show.”

Earlier this year, Pompeo co-led Hulu’s true-crime miniseries, Good American Family, about the real-life case of Natalia Grace, a Ukrainian woman with a rare form of dwarfism, adopted by an American couple who believed she was eight years old.