Ellen Pompeo got stopped by the TSA at the airport for a minor snack incident.
“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, 55, told Travel + Leisure in an interview published Thursday, May 29. “They literally held me for an hour, and they brought the bomb squad in.”
The Grey’s Anatomy star could not figure out what was happening and thought it was a joke at first.
“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 explained, adding she asked the TSA agents whether they could just throw them out, but they needed her to wait for the bomb squad to assess the item. “I almost missed the flight.”
Pompeo admitted she thought “no one would ever believe” what happened to her.
“I was texting my publicist saying, ‘I might not get on this plane, and you’re never gonna guess why,’” she noted.
This isn’t the first time a celebrity has been stopped by the TSA for a slight miscommunication.
Kaley Cuoco previously shared that she could not get through security because of two wine openers in her luggage.
“We were traveling to Australia and [my ex-husband] Karl [Cook] … ends up getting the pat-down every time we go through security,” Cuoco, 39, said in an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in September 2017. “He’s so unassuming, there’s no reason why he should be getting a pat-down. … So the last travel, I walk in and he said, ‘Something bad’s going to happen. I know something bad is going to happen.’”
The Big Bang Theory alum, who was married to Cook, 34, from 2018 to 2022, reassured him that it was going to “be fine” before he went into the machine and of course got stopped.
“The lady was like, ‘Whose bag is this?’ And it’s of course, my purse,” she explained. “So I’m like, ‘That’s my bag.’ Thinking I’m gonna get a compliment on my purse. So she goes, ‘We need to look through your bag.’ And I go, ‘It’s Gucci.’”
Cuoco went on to share that the TSA agent begins going through her bag and ends up finding a wine opener.
“Like the arms one, like a rabbit. And I was like, ‘Oh, my God! That’s a weapon,’” she recalled, adding that Cook was taken to “another room” at that point. “[I go] ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I carry a wine opener.’ So then in my big bag, I have all these little bags. She goes, ‘We need to search the rest of the bags.’”
After taking out her makeup bag, Cuoco reveals that the TSA agent found a second wine opener.
“Somehow subconsciously I stuck it in there,” she joked. “I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to be on a no-fly list.’ She goes, ‘You can’t have these on the plane.’ I go, ‘I know, I know. I just like alcohol.”
Cuoco joked that she likes “being prepared,” and one of her favorite places to drink is on a plane — although now she enjoys bourbon in addition to wine.
“Probably because I’m not allowed to carry a wine opener,” she noted.
