Ellen Pompeo's New Orphan Series is Based on a Rather Creepy True Story

In August 2022, it was announced that Ellen Pompeo, playing Dr. Meredith Grey on Grey's Anatomy, would only appear in eight episodes of the medical drama's Season 19, although she will continue to serve as the series' narrator and executive producer. From Season 20 onwards, the show will place more emphasis on the ensemble cast, but that doesn't mean that fan-favorite Meredith won't be back on screen.

Even though the actress has only partially left the project, this certainly marks a new phase in her creative career, as she will be taking on a new role for the first time in nearly 18 years. Pompeo will play one of the main characters in an untitled drama series, which appears to be much darker than Grey's Anatomy's drama. Here's everything we know about the new project so far.

Currently listed as Untitled Orphan Project, Pompeo's new show conjures up associations with the horror movies Orphan (2009) and its prequel Orphan: First Kill (2022). Surprisingly, the premises of the movies and the series are similar, and both projects are based on real events. But despite the similarities, the events behind their plots are actually quite different.

According to the premise of Orphan Project, the story will follow a Midwestern family who decide to adopt a girl with what they thought was a rare form of dwarfism. But as time goes on, they begin to doubt that they have adopted a child and not an adult trying to scam them.

Sounds similar to the plot of Orphan, in which the adopted girl was in fact an adult murderer, doesn't it? Surprisingly, that horror movie was inspired by real events, where an adopted boy named Adam turned out to be a 33-year-old woman from the Czech Republic named Barbora Skrlova.

Apparently, Pompeo's new series will be based on a similar true story.

In 2010, Kristine and Michael Barnett adopted Natalia, a girl from Ukraine who was supposedly eight years old. In 2013, the couple abandoned Natalia in Indiana and left for Canada with their two other children. They were charged with neglecting a dependent six years later, but the charges were dropped after it was discovered that Natalia was actually posing as a child, as she was actually born in 1989.

Pompeo will play the girl's adoptive mother Kristine, while the role of Natalia went to Imogen Faith Reid. It is unknown what stage the project is currently in and when it is expected to be released.