Shonda Rhimes: Welcome to Shondaland

Since stepping into the world of television in 2005, Shonda Rhimes has distinguished herself as an icon of the industry.

This isn’t just a result of her immense success – she is the showrunner of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder, making her one of the few people ever to run multiple shows concurrently – but because of her willingness to face challenge, social expectations, and adversity, only to turn these challenges on their heads and use them as stepping-stones on the path to even greater achievements.

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Upon graduating from Ivy League school Dartmouth College, Shonda Rhimes read an article stating that it was harder to get into the University of Southern California’s (USC) film degree than its law school. She thought “…this sounds like a really competitive thing to do. I’m going to do it.” And she did.

By that time, storytelling was an essential part of Rhimes’s life. At the age of four, she used to take her parent’s dictaphone and record stories for her mother – a university worker who was studying for her PhD while raising six children – to transcribe.

After honing her interest in high school, Rhimes studied English and films at Dartmouth, where she joined the Black Underground Theatre Association. There, she directed and performed in a range of student plays.

After graduation, Rhimes spent some time in advertising before reading the article about USC and deciding to enrol in order to study screenwriting. She soon caught the attention of groundbreaking producer Debra Martin Chase, who hired her as an intern while working at Mundy Lane Entertainment. Martin Chase was her first mentor, and the pair would later work together on The Princess Diaries 2.

Rhimes left USC with a Master of Fine Arts Degree, and obtained the Gary Rosenberg Writing Fellowship after ranking at the top of her class, but once she left college, she was just one of many unemployed screenwriters in Hollywood.

So what set her apart from the majority of them? The work.

“A lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people? Are busy doing. I wanted to be Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. That was my dream. I blue-skied it like crazy. I dreamed and dreamed. And while I was dreaming I was living in my sister’s basement. Dreamers often end up living in the basement of relatives.”

While developing projects, Rhimes made ends meet as an office administrator, and then a counselor for the homeless and mentally ill. During this period she worked as a research director on Peabody-winning documentary Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream, directed a short film (for which she received her only directorial credit to date) and co-wrote HBO’s Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, which helped launch Halle Berry’s career to the next level.

In September 2001, Rhimes broke up with her boyfriend. Desiring a change of scenery to take her mind off the split, she rented a house in Vermont and flew out to focus on her next script.

The next morning she awoke to scenes of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Years later, she would tell Oprah that it was the most important day of her life.

“…So I was sitting in this house in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a satellite TV watching what I thought was the world [coming] to an end and I thought, Well, the world’s going to end, and I’ve done nothing. I’m a child. I’ve done nothing.’ I got out a piece of paper and I made a list of things I was going to do if the world didn’t end. And at the top of the list was ‘adopt a baby,’ because I knew that I could not have the world end having never been a mother. I will be devastated. And the world didn’t end and I went home and I hired an adoption attorney and nine months and two days after Sept. 11 my daughter Harper was born.”

The decision to raise a child had a more profound impact than Rhimes could have realised at the time. After writing Crossroads – the film debut of Britney Spears – and The Princess Diaries II, she took some time off to raise Harper. While not attending to her daughter, Rhimes would watch television. Soon, her interest in the medium expanded.

She developed a pitch for a show about a group of women who traveled the world as war corespondents, but the breakout of war in Iraq saw the concept rejected. Rhimes started creating an idea for a medical show next, after hearing that it was what the networks were looking for. Grey’s Anatomy was conceived around a single scene featuring nervous rookie surgeons undertaking their duty for the first time. It was honest, nerve-wracking, and real. That’s why, for Rhimes, the diversity for which the show is celebrated was nothing more than an organic reflection of society.

“The goal is that everyone should get to turn on the TV and see someone who looks like them and loves like them. And just as important, everyone should turn on the TV and see someone who doesn’t look like them and love like them. Because perhaps then they will learn from them. Perhaps then they will not isolate them. Marginalise them. Erase them. Perhaps they will even come to recognise themselves in them. Perhaps they will even learn to love them.

I think that when you turn on the television and you see love, from anyone, with anyone, to anyone—real love—a service has been done for you. Your heart has somehow been expanded, your mind has somehow grown. Your soul has been opened a little more. You’ve experienced something. The very idea that love exists, that it is possible, that one can have a “person”. . . You are not alone.”

Rhimes established her production company, Shondaland, and the series was given the green light by the ABC in 2004. It premiered the following year, and was an immediate success.

In 2007, Rhimes created the spin-off show Private Practice, which ran for six seasons.

Quickly, Rhimes had to make the transition from eager showrunner, excited to be on her first television series, to a determined, focused leader. Production of Grey’s was tough in the early years, thanks in no small part to constant clashes between Rhimes and actress Katherine Heigl, who at one point refused to seek a nomination for an Emmy because she thought the show’s material undercut her credibility.

The disputes inspired the concept for Rhimes’s next show: Scandal. Set around a crisis management firm with links to The White House, it too was instantly well received for its portrayal of a strong black woman who keeps the President’s willfulness in check.

In 2014, Rhimes launched How to Get Away with Murder, making her one of the few producers to ever concurrently run three hit television shows, and the first ever to do so with a single network.

Recently, after years of getting used to saying no, Rhimes committed to a ‘year of yes’, which saw her appear on The Mindy Project as herself, and deliver the commencement speech at her alma mater, Dartmouth College.

In such a male-dominated industry, Rhimes has set an example for a new generation of showrunners. She’s happy to admit it, but highlights her drive, not her skin tone or gender, should be the reason for it. The Hollywood Reporter notes that when Rhimes received a draft announcement for an event which she was speaking at, she saw the phrase ‘the most powerful black female showrunner in Hollywood’, crossed out the words ‘black’ and ‘female’, and sent it back.

To the critics who put her success down to lucky timing, Rhimes has only one thing to say: “I am not lucky. You know what I am? I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard. Don’t call me lucky. Call me a badass.”

A badass indeed.