One Monday afternoon, Shonda Rhimes sent me an email. The powerhouse behind ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away With Murder launched right in with a story. A few days earlier, at the network’s presentation to advertisers in New York, executives announced that Scandal’s upcoming seventh season would be its last. Rhimes wasn’t at the event. She had skipped the trip to New York, choosing instead to live-stream the proceedings “in our Shondaland theater with all of our writers, editors, and the rest of the team.” Being in L.A. made her “glad,” she says, recalling her emotions in a single word. “Why was I glad? Because I didn’t have to actually face it. The decision I made. The decision to end a thing I love.” But there was another reason Rhimes stayed behind, one that was encapsulated by the selfie she included in the email: a black-and-white photo of her in sweats—no makeup, no blowout—staring intently into her MacBook. Rhimes has been busy lately, daydreaming up new projects and businesses fueled by a spirit of unyielding curiosity and experimentalism that she calls, simply, “What If We . . .”
This Shonda-ism, one of many phrases that she’s been injecting into the culture since dubbing Patrick Dempsey “McDreamy” on Grey’s almost 13 years ago, represents the exact kind of wit and inspiration she’ll undoubtedly call upon as she expands her empire this year. Shondaland, as Rhimes’s television production company is known, is another “ism,” which has grown to encompass the range of issues her shows explore—the kinds of gender politics and personal dramas encountered by her unapologetically ambitious, multicultural female characters. Shondaland.com, launching this fall, will further this mission as a hub for personal-empowerment content that reflects Rhimes’s inclusive worldview. The email in which she confessed her feelings about the ABC event was in fact her site’s inaugural newsletter.
“I just want to find other ways to tell stories, other ways to be engaged with the world,” says Rhimes, 47, when we meet a week or so later. Few television creators have ever achieved such name recognition, and those that have—Norman Lear (All in the Family), David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal), Chuck Lorre (The Big Bang Theory), and Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story)—have not only been white and male, but have mainly leveraged their clout to make yet more filmed entertainment (and more money).
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