"It's time." Ellen Pompeo talks about her first major role since 'Grey's Anatomy'

HOLLYWOOD -- Ellen Pompeo is scrapping the "Grey's Anatomy" scrubs and getting surgical about her next moves. And that's why "Good American Family" is the first project she's done since "Grey's" began.

"It was the polar opposite of what I've been doing for 20 years and I thought, 'it's time,'" Pompeo told On The Red Carpet at the show's Hollywood premiere.

"Good American Family" stars Pomeo, Mark Duplass, Imogen Faith Reid, Dulé Hill, Christina Hendricks and Sarayu Blue.

It's inspired by the stranger-than-fiction story of Natalia Grace, a Ukrainian girl born with a rare form of Dwarfism, who's adopted by a midwestern family. But the adoptive parents become suspicious that everything isn't quite what it seems when it comes to Natalia. They believe she's playing them and is not actually a child, but an adult, and they leave her to fend for herself. Another family comes into play, cops and courts are involved and the drama of it all will leave you wondering who's the good guy and who's the bad guy in all of this.

According to Pompeo, who stars as Kristine and is also an executive producer, the questions are by design.

"It's the idea of perspective and the perspective shifting. We can all hear the same story and we can all come away with something different and I think that's the interesting thing about being a human being," said Pompeo.

Tackling a controversial story like Natalia Grace's was particularly challenging for girl-dad Duplass.

"There's that expression where once you become a parent, you become a parent to every child in the world. And I have real strong paternal energy and I have a little bit of savior complex energy which also helped me tap into Michael," Duplass explained. "But in particular, the way that a father might treat his daughter, some of that stuff was really hard. And Imogen and I got really close, she plays Natalia. So it was very hard to do some of that stuff on set."

For Reid, having veteran actors like Pompeo and Duplass as on-screen parents to help her through the nerves of her first role was a blessing.

"(Ellen) always told me that I can stand up for myself and have a voice and that was what I needed because this is my first big role and as a young woman, we always need to hear that," Reid said. "And Mark, what an amazing human, like I have never seen a nicer human in my life."

Hendricks plays Cynthia, a woman who comes into Natalia's life after she is seemingly abandoned by her family.

"There's sort of little clues to people's personalities and sort of how people manipulate and how people gain power. I think a lot of this has to do with who has the power and who doesn't and how you get that and who listens to who," she said.

Hill plays Detective Drysdale, who is looking into allegations on all sides of this story.

"The main thing really was how it stays with you, something's nagging you, you have to keep going back to it," he said. "WIth Drysdale, he just could not let it go."

"It was a very difficult story to be a part of and I feel deeply thankful for the really loving and supportive environment that we had and the cast that we have, this star of Imogen and Ellen and Mark and the showrunners," said Sarayu Blue, who plays Kristine's friend Valika. "There was a real creative collaboration every step of the way and that's why it is what it is."

The first two episodes of "Good American Family" premiere March 19 on Hulu. A new episode will drop weekly after that.

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