Shonda Rhimes was told to “just make the shows you want to make”. No one was expecting it to be the hugely successful Regency period drama.
I have interviewed stars more famous than Shonda Rhimes. I have never, however, been asked by so many female friends to tell one that they love her. The television Rhimes writes creates an intimacy with viewers so intensely personal that when we first meet, I feel – like my friends – as if I already know her. Rhimes’ body language quickly makes it clear that she would rather we didn’t.
In 2017, she joined Netflix for a reported $US150 million in a deal to, as the streaming bosses told her, “just make the shows you want to make”. They weren’t expecting her first idea to be a Regency period drama. “I don’t think they understood what we were doing, but they were excited because I was excited.
I ask what happened when she encountered evidence – on the street, on the bus, in shops – that white people didn’t necessarily see black women that way. She begins to smile. “It felt like, ‘Oh my God, these other people don’t know. Did you notice that? They don’t actually know.’ That’s what it felt like. I was raised to never be interested in what other people believed I could do, so their opinions didn’t really matter at all. If they feel they want to be racist, that’s their problem.
“Social media changed. Fans have passionate feelings, and I was always fine with that. But then it became weird.”she had to have a police car parked outside her house for a week, due to death threats from fans unhappy with how she had ended that series. “They got mean. And you never knew who was going to really take offence in the wrong way.” She had to employ private 24-hour security at her house in LA, not because fans were endlessly bothering her for selfies.
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