Ellen Pompeo is trading one set of hospital scrubs for another, but her next television role promises to take her well beyond the familiar territory of Grey’s Anatomy.
Pompeo is attached to star in Not a Sound, a drama in development at Hulu that combines a medical background with a murder mystery. She will play Amelia Winn, a disgraced emergency room nurse whose life is transformed after a hit-and-run accident leaves her without her hearing.
Amelia’s attempt to rebuild her life takes a dangerous turn when she and her service dog discover the body of a former colleague. The discovery pulls her into a mystery that could ultimately expose the truth behind the accident that changed her own life.
The series is based on Heather Gudenkauf’s novel of the same name and brings Pompeo together with veteran television producer David E. Kelley, whose credits include Big Little Lies and Boston Legal.
Matthew Tinker and Annakate Chappell are writing the adaptation after previously working together on Big Sky. Filmmaker Azazel Jacobs is attached to direct.
Pompeo will also serve as an executive producer through her Calamity Jane production company alongside Laura Holstein. Kelley, Tinker, Chappell and Jacobs are also among the executive producers, with 20th Television behind the project.
The role gives Pompeo another opportunity to move beyond Meredith Grey while keeping one foot, perhaps inevitably, in the medical world. She became one of television’s most recognizable stars after Grey’s Anatomy premiered in 2005 and has gradually reduced her onscreen presence on the long-running series in recent seasons.
Her relationship with Hulu has also been expanding. Pompeo recently starred in and executive produced Good American Family, and she is attached to another project for the streamer, the dramedy pilot Chicks.
Not a Sound, however, could offer one of her most significant departures from Meredith Grey. Amelia Winn may have an emergency room background, but the character’s personal trauma, hearing loss and involvement in a murder investigation place Pompeo in considerably darker dramatic territory.
After more than two decades of audiences watching her save lives inside a hospital, Pompeo’s latest medical professional may be the one fighting to uncover the truth about what nearly destroyed her own.
