Shonda Rhimes

With five series on ABC’s 2016­­–17 slate, Shonda Rhimes is among the most successful creators and showrunners in Hollywood. The shows she has created, including Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, have delved into the ambitions, challenges and private lives of doctors; examined the political process; and provided loyal live-tweeting viewers with jaw-dropping moments. Her production company, Shondaland, is also responsible for the hit legal thriller How to Get Away with Murder and the dramatic caper The Catch. While overseeing budgets, casting, scripts and myriad details involved with producing prime-time shows, Rhimes sees herself principally as a storyteller.

WS: Do you have a process for assembling your writers’ rooms? How do you vet writers?
RHIMES: [When selecting writers], you want people in the room who you want to spend eight hours a day with, in very close quarters, sharing all the personal details of your life, because that is really what a writers’ room ends up being. Most [showrunners] ask people to write samples of other shows. I don’t like that. I always want to read an original piece of writing, an original script. I want to read a play. Once I hired somebody based on a story they wrote. I just want to know that the person can write and really write; that, to me, is very important. I never hire someone because they worked on this show or wrote a spec script of a Lost episode. I want somebody who has written something original that shows that they have a voice and an opinion. I also try to hire people who have a point of view about something. If we’ve read your script and like it and you come to meet us and you sit in the interview and are just trying to please me, as opposed to stating your own real opinions, you are never going to make it past that process because I don’t want somebody who is just going to agree with me. If I have a bunch of people in the room who are agreeing with me, I might as well be talking to myself.

WS: Grey’s Anatomy is in its 13th season. In a previous interview, you told me that at the beginning of each season you knew how you wanted it to end and you worked toward that. Is that still your strategy?
RHIMES: That’s always the strategy. I don’t think there is any other way to do it. That show has to be planned that way. I am always working toward our end game and the story we are trying to tell. It makes [the show] better.

WS: What is the process for keeping Grey’s fresh every year?
RHIMES: I treat every season like it’s the very last season of the show, and I’ve been doing that since season one. Treating it like the very last season of the show leaves every little bit of the show on the screen, so that at the end of the season I truly have no idea what we are going to do next season. I remember ending the season with the plane crash and saying, All right, the writers’ room is going to assemble next season, and if anybody has any idea how to get out of that forest, [speak up]! It’s really important to me that we write everything and don’t do the thing that many people do, which is hold stuff back and keep things going slower. You want to write everything like this is it, so every season is as exciting as it can be. What keeps it fresh, what keeps me interested and the reason I can still pay attention to the show and care about it is that every season is a different show. Meredith Grey is moving through her own little 24-hour movie, as far as I’m concerned, versus the same show year after year after year. I couldn’t do that.

WS: Scandal weaves important and topical issues into every episode. How do you balance those jaw-dropping moments with these serious issues?
RHIMES: I don’t ever think of that as something we’re doing purposely. We are telling the stories that we feel are interesting. When we tell them, I am literally writing them because that’s what’s in my head at the moment; it’s not necessarily because we want to tell something topical. What’s terrifying most of the time is that we’ve written an episode two months earlier and shot it already, and I’ll come into the writers’ room and say, OK guys, that episode when we wrote about so and so, well, it just happened [in real life]. And now the episode is going to air and it’s going to look like we wrote it after [the fact]! That happens a lot to us. That was great until we got to this election cycle. We were either writing at the same time or a little behind the Donald Trump thing with our Hollis Doyle character.

WS: How do you and the actors collaborate to bring characters to life? How has Kerry Washington contributed to Olivia Pope, and Viola Davis to Annalise Keating?
RHIMES: Those are very different relationships. Pete Nowalk, who writes and created How to Get Away with Murder, has a different process and relationship with Viola than I have with Kerry. I am very much [the one to say], Here is the script, here are the words, they are not changing. But I am also never going to tell you how to interpret them or what to do. For me it’s, Here is the text, and I’m excited to see what comes back to me on screen with your performance. And that performance often dictates what happens next in the show. I’ll watch something in the editing room and then run back up to the writers’ room and say, Oh my God, these two characters are secretly in love with each other, and I can tell that from how they played this scene. Or, Oh my God, I think this person might be the person who stole the election; I can tell because of how they played this scene. It’s not about Kerry saying, I think the character should do this, or me telling Kerry, I think your character should act this way. The collaboration comes through [me saying], Here is the text, go. Then I interpret what they do when it comes back.

Pete Nowalk and Viola have a very different relationship. There is a writer in Viola, and Pete loves it. The two of them spend a lot of time discussing story, and Viola pitches a lot of story to him. They talk about story back and forth. He loves her input on where characters are going. Viola pitched the idea of Annalise taking off her wig. They are very collaborative in that way, which is just a different kind of collaboration that works for them.

WS: What is your role in the shows that have their own creators? Do you supervise them?
RHIMES: I like to say the difference between being the person whose show it is and the person supervising, it’s like being the grandmother—I hold the baby, but I can give the baby back! So I am there for whatever [the creator] needs. If Pete wants me to write a Cicely Tyson scene and he feels unsure about it, I’ll write a Cicely Tyson scene. If Pete wants me to come to the set and talk to him about costumes, I’ll come to the set and talk about costumes. If I need to talk to an actor for [the showrunners on other Shondaland series], I’ll talk to an actor. If it’s just coming to a table read, I’ll come to a table read. If they just want to come down to my office and tell me what they’re going to do with the story, and I’m just a sounding board for them, then I’m a sounding board. If I have to talk to the network for them, I’ll talk to the network. It’s whatever they need to get their job done. Sometimes it’s hard, and sometimes it’s very easy. I’m really about getting people to stand on their own two feet.

WS: Tell us about your new show that will premiere midseason.
RHIMES: It’s set in the world of Shakespeare, and I like to say it begins where Romeo and Juliet ends. It’s a little bit like Game of Thrones, but in the world of Shakespeare. It’s a little more grown up than you’d think. And it has a really great element of, we’re not watching the major players; we’re watching the people we didn’t necessarily pay attention to when we were watching Romeo and Juliet. They were the characters who were off to the side.

WS: Have you ever felt restricted by Broadcast Standards and Practices, or can there be freedom in having to work within restrictions?
RHIMES: I think both. I think there is a certain freedom that comes from having to work within restrictions. You get really creative when you don’t have options. But yes, I’d be lying if I said that sometimes it’s not incredibly frustrating to be hemmed in by rules. I actually don’t think it’s that interesting to have characters cursing, and it’s not that interesting to have ridiculous nudity for no reason whatsoever. But I do think that sometimes the rules of Standards and Practices don’t really have anything to do with the actual reality of anybody’s standards and practices as much as they have to do with things that are very old-fashioned. I find myself a lot of times—and usually I win, so it’s OK—battling someone’s perception of what they believe [viewers] won’t want to see on screen versus what I know is inappropriate to show on screen. Obviously, I don’t want to show nudity, but abortion is a legal procedure in the United States of America. And if a character is having [an abortion] I will fight tooth and nail so we can show it. It’s very interesting that there are these rules that don’t really have anything to do with truth.

WS: You’ve gone from writing to showrunning to heading Shondaland. How have you honed your business skills through the years and how do you balance the artist in you with the businessperson?
RHIMES: Probably by not trying too hard to think about it, and mostly by really paying attention to what is needed from me as a business­person. At a certain point, it became very clear to me that I needed to be savvy about the business orientation and the budgeting and all the other stuff that goes along with the brand that is Shondaland and basically me, and that the network was making that a piece of their branding. There is a certain amount of press that comes with that, and to have that suddenly be a part of my job felt overwhelming. It was also important to me to be able to lead all these people and do it well. Learning how to do all that was a challenge, but once it was done it was good, and learning how to delegate is a part of that. You surround yourself with people that you really trust, and you lean on them and allow them to do their jobs, as opposed to micromanaging everything. Once I started to do that, I really kept my focus, because the only focus I really should be having is remaining the storyteller. My biggest obligation is to the story of the show and keeping that truth for the audience, whatever that takes. Finding a way to do that was important.

WS: You are being honored as MIPCOM’s Personality of the Year. Are there certain accomplishments of which you are most proud?
RHIMES: I think I’m probably going to disappoint you by saying I don’t think about any accomplishments at all. I still find it surprising that anybody wants to give me an award at this point. I’m 46 years old; I feel like I just got started. Recently there has been a slate of what appear to be lifetime achievement awards, which makes me feel like people are trying to tell me to stop! I’m worried that’s what the message is! I’m just getting started. I just figured out how to do this job as well as I possibly can. I’m not looking back at anything. This is just the beginning.

WS: In your book, Year of Yes, you wrote about feeling a particular connection to the character Cristina Yang in Grey’s Anatomy. Do you feel connected to any of your characters now in a special way?
RHIMES: I feel connected to all my characters in a special way. It’s interesting, when I wrote the book I think I was in a particular place with Cristina because I was literally just losing that character. They are all some piece of me. I feel extremely protective of all of them.