After becoming a mom, Rhimes said she was not going anywhere and was "watching a lot more television."
Shonda Rhimes was a woman in Chicago who was daydreaming about what she would want to accomplish with her life before getting her start in Hollywood. The medical drama Grey's Anatomy, created by Shonda Rhimes, debuted in 2005 and is scheduled to return for a 20th season. But according to the show's creator, she didn't plan on it continuing for this long. In an interview with Willie Geist on Sunday Today, the American writer and producer shared that she would like to credit her motherhood to her success.
"At first, I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to work in politics, all of those things, which I finally realized, 'No. I don’t want to do any of those things. I just want to write about them.' Because it’s much more fun to build the world, yourself. And so I did,” she said on the Sunday Sitdown show from May 7. Although she started off writing for movies, making a TV program was a different challenge. Rhimes was then solely recognized for her work on the screenplays for films like Crossroads and The Princess Diaries 2. She said that she didn't switch to television until after becoming a mother, reported TODAY.
"I wrote a medical show that’s not what other people were thinking of as being, like, correct medical shows. It didn’t take it too seriously. And it wasn’t about the patients; it was how the doctors felt about the patients, it was about their lives,” she told the interviewer. Adding how being a mom helped her realize she could use her talents in television Rhimes said, “I wasn’t going anywhere, suddenly. And I was watching a lot more television. And I realized, ‘This is where all the character development is really happening.'"
The mother-of-three continued, "I didn’t see any women who were fully rounded and three dimensional, who got to be selfish, who got to be powerful, who got to be greedy, who got to be loving, in the same way, that you see male characters doing it. And to me, I just wanted to see people who were like the people I knew.” She wanted to represent women on television the way she thought they were in the real world with Grey's Anatomy, and she succeeded. Rhimes quickly established herself as a major player in Hollywood.
The showrunner and Netflix agreed to an exclusive, multi-year development contract in 2017, reportedly for $100 million. Forbes states that Rhimes is currently the "self-proclaimed highest-paid showrunner in Hollywood." Well-known now for her work on popular television programs including Bridgerton, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, Inventing Anna, and the upcoming Queen Charlotte Rhimes aims to write better in the years to come to develop layered characters and portrayals of women.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apV5uE0DcEw&ab_channel=SundaySitdownwithWillieGeistPodc
https://www.today.com/popculture/tv/shonda-rhimes-greys-anatomy-inspiration-rcna83196
https://www.forbes.com/profile/shonda-rhimes/?sh=1919272bbd55
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Jason Mendez
