TV
Pompeo will star in a lead role and serve as an executive producer for the upcoming series, which has been given a pilot order.
Ellen Pompeo will draw on her roots starring in a new Boston-set crime dramedy. Chris Pizzello/AP Photo
The doctor is out for a new Boston-set Hulu series starring Everett native Ellen Pompeo.
Best known for playing Dr. Meredith Grey on “Grey’s Anatomy,” Pompeo will take on a new kind of role in “Chicks,” which she will executive produce, according to Deadline. Hulu has ordered a pilot for the family dramedy, written by Katie Robbins, who will also executive produce.
“Chicks” follows Chickie (Pompeo) and Doreen, two estranged half-sisters who inherit their wise guy dad’s crime legacy when he “unexpectedly kicks the bucket,” Deadline reported. They’re inspired to “run increasingly audacious frauds,” through which they form an “odd-couple bond.”
The series is based in the “rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods of old Boston,” according to Deadline. Despite that setting, production is slated to start in New York in September.
Pompeo and Robbins previously collaborated on the Hulu limited series “Good American Family,” a dramatization of the life of Natalia Grace. “Chicks” was inspired by conversations that the actress and writer had on set, and Robbins developed the idea specifically for Pompeo, according to Deadline.
Though no filming in Boston has been announced yet, it sounds like Pompeo will be able to reach back into her roots for this role. During an interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast last year, she described her “pretty intense” upbringing in the Boston area, where she saw from an early age that “people with money had power.”
“They were all mafia guys and really bad people. They were great to all of us, but really, they weren’t probably the best guys, and I know that now,” Pompeo said. “But they were the ones who had all the power and … literally the sea parted when they walked through, and they just had this command.”
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