Shonda Rhimes Talks to Alex Cooper About ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ‘Scandal,’ Marriage, and More
Shonda also discusses the 10th Anniversary Edition of her book “Year of Yes.”
On this week’s episode of “Call Her Daddy,” Alex Cooper sits down with Shonda Rhimes to discuss the 10th Anniversary Edition of her book “Year of Yes.”
During the episode, Shonda Rhimes discusses her different TV shows including “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal,” “How To Get Away With Murder,” as well as writing the movies “Crossroads,” “The Princess Diaries 2,” and more. Shonda also opens to Alex about casting Ellen Pompeo and Sandra Oh, revealing the hardest storyline emotionally to write for “Grey’s,” and overseeing the entire lineup of Thursday night TV for ABC.
Additionally, Shonda speaks about her thoughts on marriage and her decision to have children through adoption and surrogacy.
Shonda Rhimes on How ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Came to Be
“I wrote a pilot one year, like the very first year I made the effort to go through the, like it’s called television development season. I went through development season and I wrote a show about war correspondence, which was like four women who were super competitive and covered wars and I loved it, but we were kind of at war and it was considered in poor taste, which was fine. So, the next year they were like, “Well, do you wanna try another development season again?” and I was like, I was at ABC and I was like, “What does Bob Iger want?” He’s the chairman of the company. I was like, “What does he want?” They’re like, “He wants a medical show,” and I was one of those people who could watch surgeries on those channels, Discovery Channel, where they show you like “We’re moving a tumor.” I thought that stuff was amazing and by the way, when I had been thinking about leaving Hollywood, I was gonna go and do a postbaccalaureate year to then go to medical school, so I was like, “This is made for me.”
