Shonda Rhimes

learned she's not just a creator, but a leader. When this episode appeared, Appear, Shanda discusses her ambitions at Netflix and the goal she set for her production company, Shonda Land. Shanda, you shocked the entertainment world a few years ago when you said that you were leaving ABC, even though you were mostly their biggest profit source on the entertainment programs in the evening. And we're moving to Netflix, which is not a television production company but a streaming television company.

So why did you do that? You know, I really had been looking at what was going on in the industry. You know, television ratings had been sort of slowly lowering. A lot of people were watching things like Netflix. I knew what I was watching UM and I knew what was exciting me and where it felt like the really exciting programming was coming from. And I also was looking for a certain kind of freedom. You know, I've been

making a very particular brand of television for ABC. You know, Shonda Land on ABC was a certain brand of television which I was very proud of. But I really wanted to spread my wings and do more than that, and this was a real opportunity to do so. So you

go over to Netflix. Now when everybody is when somebody is famous and they move, let's saying a baseball player or a football player they go to a different team, or somebody tries something different, people are always saying this person isn't really as good as they their reputation and they're gonna flop. And there's a lot of um. I would say, in Hollywood, maybe there's some people that don't like people that are too successful, and so they're kind

of wishing secretly maybe they're gonna flop. But you didn't flop. You had an incredible hit. Uh, Your first show Britain was the big most successful opening show of any thing on Netflix ever. All is Fair in Love and War. So when they went on for the first time. Were you worried that night whether it would actually be a success or did you not panic? You know what's interesting, I wasn't scared about the success of the show. That that's not my job. I always say that I was

happy by then because Netflix was already happy. Everybody had already really liked the show. Everybody was really pleased with it. I wasn't worried about numbers or how it was going to do. One of the things I liked about Netflix was everybody told me I didn't have to worry about the numbers. You know, ratings don't quote unquote matter on Netflix. Um, of course they do, but you know, that was the sort of thought that was had, so I wasn't worried

about that. I was much more nervous when we were editing the show and we were seeing what the product was like. I wanted to see what the shows turned out as and how they felt. So once I knew the shows were good and I wanted to watch them, and I felt really good about them, and I felt like they could be exciting and addictive. And then it turned out that this they felt the same way, I felt fine. I don't even think I paid attention that

very first day that they came out. You also started another show that will be coming on Netflix called Inventing Anna, which is about a woman who pretended she was a wealthy German heiress. It turned out she was not. Why didn't you think that was going to be attractive for a series? I was fascinated by this story. One because I'm fascinated by journalism, and I really loved the journalism that went with uncovering this story. But two, Anna is

a really interesting character to me. She's a truly a genius. And I also think that if she were a guy and she had pulled it off, people would have just applauded her um. But I think because she was a woman and she sort of had the audacity to believe that she could do this, it felt a little bit like in a front to a lot of people. She was sort of labeled in a lot of ways that I don't think we label men. And I liked this idea of this woman with all of this ambition and

no place to put it. There is something about that that felt really profound to me and felt very now for where we are now. So when you're writing something, it's a solitary kind of thing. How do you do writing but also you're doing production and you're doing other things. How do you concentrate and have the time alone to write? Well? You know, there is an aspect of writing that is

um communal. You know, there is the writer's room where it's you and sort of seven or right other writers, and your job is to sort of help them through writing their drafts of the show that you've created, which is both amazing and fun and very difficult. What the pandemic did, I think is sort of make that writer's

room process a lot harder. Um. But for me, you know, writing is it's a very solitary experience, and I'm a very fast writer when I have the space and the time to do so, I feel like I'm much more naturally an introvert, and so being you know, being the person who writes and does that stuff is much easier for me than the other parts of it, which are the public parts or the the producing city in groups

and explaining to everybody what has to happen part. But finding the balance has been um much easier than I thought. During COVID, I assume you were working out of your home more than your office. So is it easier to write a show or create a show from home with

three young daughters running around? Um? I found, you know, being at home to be both revelatory in the sense that I had always felt like there was so much there was so much work to be done that I had to be standing right in front of everybody to be doing and then I discovered that no, actually, a a lot of people got a lot more freedom to do things that I didn't need to be controlling and be I got a lot more writing done just being at home. Are you going to change the way you operate?

Will you spend more time at home now? Or you say, actually, I can't wait to get back to my office. I definitely I'm going to spend more time at home, mainly because I get a lot more writing done here. Um, there's not as many interruptions. I've discovered how little I am needed on set. You know. I used to joke that if I'm standing on a sound stage, I'm the only person who's not working because I'm either writing or editing. So from where they're shooting, I'm the only person not

doing a job. So to me, UM, I think there's a lot more that can be done if I'm at home now, which I never would have believed before. Um, it's that feeling of you're so you're so necessary everywhere and discovering that you're not that necessary everywhere, but that the places where you can be necessary, you can really make a difference if you focus on those. So let's talk about your background. Um, you grew up in a suburb of Chicago. You're the youngest of six children, is

that right correct? So when you're the youngest of six, I guess you get a lot of hand me down clothes and your parents really pay attention to the youngest of six. By that time, they're kind of done, aren't they gone. You know what's interesting is I didn't get a lot of hand me down clothes, and my parents were very focused on us, which was delightful for me. Um, my parents are educators, so I think for them, they're very They were very intensely focused on um, making sure

that we had what we needed. My mother I always said, like, if we were poor, I did not know it because my mother made all of our clothes and they were all fantastic looking, and we there was a lot of focus placed on us. My mother stayed home for a long time for us, which I think it was a big sacrifice for somebody as intelligent as she was and as interested in being at work as she was. But she really made sure that we were well placed in the world and sort of ready to go out into

the world and be who we were supposed to be. Okay, so you grew up and you went to college. How did you happen to pick Dartmouth Because it's fairly isolated and much different than Chicago. You know, it was interesting. I went um on a college tour and Dartmouth was one of the places that we visited, and honestly, I fell in love with the place when I got there. It was beautiful, It was in the middle of nowhere. It felt very much to me like what college was

supposed to be. Every single person I met there had been was really friendly and had something great to say about it, and very different from a lot of the other colleges I went to. It was surprisingly diverse at the time. I think they had you know, what might not seem like a big number now, but I think like eighteen percent of the students were students of color or something like that, and it felt very welcoming, and I thought, well, this is a place for me, and

I absolutely loved my time there. So when you graduated, you said, Okay, now I'm going to go into something important like private equity or investment banking or not. You know, I was really lost for a little while when I got out of college because I really wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be Tony Morrison when I grew up, but I didn't know how to do that. And I also, you know, my parents had sacrificed a lot financially for me to go to this school, and

I didn't want to be a disappointment. So I got a job in advertising for a little bit. And then I read an article that said, um, it was harder to get into USC Film School than it was to get into Harvard Law School. And I thought, well, my parents can't fall that because it's graduate school and it's difficult to get into. And so I applied to USC Film School. I got in and I went and I told my parents, but I can teach, and as professors, my parents thought, well, she's right, she can teach, and

so it felt like something real for them. So you got a master's at USC and then you were sort of writing on the side a bit during the daytime or an evenings or how are you doing that? Yeah, I got a job at a place that helped the mentally ill homeless learned job skills and find places to live. I was like an administrative assistant, and at night I would write my scripts and I had a I had an agent or a lawyer at the time. You know that everybody got one out of film school kind of

hoping that something would happen for them. And I end up selling a script and that script basically changed my life. And I had that script not sold, you might be still in advertising or what would you think you'd be doing. I remember when, like a month before that script sold, I had applied for the post baccalaureate year that prepared you for medical school at Brent Mahr and I was

going to go and do that. And then I was going to go to medical school because I thought, I can't I can't start this way anymore, like this is not this is not for me. I'm going to go be a doctor. And luckily I did not do that.

So the medical professions loss is the creative writing communities gain right because you're not a doctor, but it worked out okay, And I hope that, you know, maybe the writing about doctors inspired a lot of young women to be doctors, So hopefully it was also the medical professions games, as I like to think of it. Most people who have been successful in Hollywood as producers where writers have been white men. Um Norman Lear Aaron Spelling are two

classic examples. When you came along, you were not a man and you were not white. So was there a lot of discrimination against you that you felt pompably at the time or was it very subtle? I was tind of have to be a difficult question to answer. And I say that because, um, I don't know what it feels like to be a white man, So I don't know how people were treating the white men at the time.

I only know how I've always been treated. And I was, you know, raised very clearly by my parents to be a person who did not look at things as obstacles. I looked at things as hilst to climb. And when anybody treated me in a way that was not respectful, I was taught that that was always their problem and that they needed to be put in their place. And then I should move forward. And so I'm sure that I experienced a lot of things that were not probably

what other people experienced. I just chose not to be defeated by them or or even bothered. Some of them. I probably didn't even bother to notice. So today, given how prominent you are in the entertainment world, do you feel discrimination at any point now? Or you don't feel

any discrimination? Um? No, I mean, I'm there's an there's an in celerity that comes with, you know, being in a certain position in Hollywood, But that doesn't change the fact that, you know, if somebody doesn't know who you are, they still see you as, you know, just another person of a person of color. The racism in this country is the racism in this country, unfortunately. So the events that led to the murder of George Floyd obviously affected

our country dramatically, and certainly the African American community particularly. Um, how did you respond to that you're a prominent African American figure in the country. Um, did you feel you had some obligation to speak out or do more or how did it change your life? Would you say? I mean, I still I think that I think the events well, I think that the entire George Floyd situation. I did a couple of things. One, obviously, like anybody else, I

felt nothing but rage and frustration. But I also felt real dismay that a lot of people use that event to finally discover that racism existence. Um. That was. That was disturbing to me. That it took that something that horrific for people to go like, oh wait, there's inequality. That was That was a little upsetting for me. I don't necessarily know that I felt like I had a particular obligation to do anything, um, more than any other person. Did you know a lot of people were marching, a

lot of people were protesting. I think the beauty of what happened with George Floyd was how many average citizens stood up and did something. Um. I think that's that's the power of that moment, and hopefully will continue to

be the power of that moment. But I also feel like, whatever I'm asked this question, I never quite know how to walk the line between saying like, well, here's what I did, and here's what I think is important, and because I feel like it might let people off the hook a little bit, because it also suggests that racism is the problem of people of color. And really, I feel like I always want to say, well, it's not what I did to work on the George Floyd problem.

It's not what I did to work on racism. You know, race is m is a white people's problem, and what are white people doing to solve it? So, to me, like that's the big question that should be asked. Public companies often focus on shareholders now increasing they're worried about other stakeholders, employees, communities, and so forth. Your own company, do you focus it on having some social responsibility as well? You know, it's interesting we've been struggling with that concept

right now because we don't sell activism. We sell entertainment. And you know, if we wake somebody up to the idea that they have a severarate responsibility or that there's a social justice issue that they could be involved in, or that there's a feminist issue that they can be

involved in, that's a wonderful side effect. But I also know that given just who we are as a company and the kind of stories we tell and the kind of work that we do, there's other aspects of us that feel important to how we as a company engaged

with the with the area around us. So I feel like it's important, for instance, to create worlds in which we're making pathways for other people cloud have opportunity in this industry UM and figuring out other philanthropic ways that makes sense for us as a company UM that feel right for who we are. So you're thinking companies should perhaps have a role in commenting on climate change or

rightel discriminations and assessing that works for us. But I do feel like I spend my energy and my money and my time on companies that are that share the values that I share. And I'm not interested in spending my money and time and company and companies that don't share those values. And I mean I actively don't share those values. I don't necessarily know how I feel about companies that remain neutral at this point. I've been really thinking about that because I do think people have the

right to remain politically neutral. It's the ones that sort of are going in opposite directions, actively destroying the climate or actively working against women's right to choose things that things that I find worrisome that I that I'm concerned about. So let's talk about Shanda Land. You've built a quite a I would say entertainment company back. So let's go through some of the things and how you're able to do all that. So let's talk about, for example, UM,

you have a podcast as well. Now you're doing with I Heart Media. Is that right? We have a podcast division, yeah, called Shonda Land Audio. The great thing is is that you know, I am really lucky that I have amazing people who work with me at Shonda Land. So UM, Sandy Bailey, who runs our digital division, came to me and said, I really think that we could have a podcast division and it could be really powerful. And she's been overseeing it and has come up with some really

great shows. And part of the beauty of it is we can take somebody like Katie Lows, who start on Scandal and who was in inventing Anna, and showcase her with a podcast called Katie's Crib, which is about parenting, which has become one of the most popular podcasts on Apple iTunes and on my Heart and those things to listen to. We can do a podcast with someone like Laverne Cox who's also in inventing Anna. We can take a show like Bridgetain create a podcast about it, UM

that's doing really well. Also do behind the scenes video footage. Take that video footage, put it on our website, UM shondlan dot com and sort of have a nice synergy going. And that's been really important to me to really create a world in which all of the aspects of our shows and all the aspects of UM are are people I call them the people in our Shawonda Land family can find a place to be creative and exist in

one spot. Now you have a partnership as well with Dove, and that is designed to, I think, among other things, let people UM know more about the way their hair might be UM worn. Can you explain your views on hair, particularly for African American women and children. Well, you know, the partnership with Dove has been long standing, and one of the things that I always have loved about Dove is that they have been really UM positive and really assertive about the idea that real beauty is defined in

all forms. You know, every skin and everybody, every kind of woman is their own definition of beauty. And they have been, you know, instrumental in working on Crown Act, which is um a law that's been passed and I can't remember how many states by this point UM that says that you can't be discriminated against because of the way you wear your hair, and that has been a

real issue for a lot of people of color. You know, you hear the stories of the basketball kid who gets his dreads cut off before he's allowed to play, or somebody who's fired because of the way they're wearing their hair. At work. We try really hard to sort of umu police the way people look, because it doesn't look like, you know, the way somebody feels that they should look,

and that is a real bias in this country. And so the idea that we could create something called the Crown Act allows people to you know, sort of embrace who they are culturally and wear their hair the way they need to wear their hair, or be who they need to be, versus trying to achieve some standard that's based on sort of a white, you know, European centric

idea of what people are supposed to look like. So you wrote a book as well, You're Yes, and that was reflecting the fact that you're one of your sisters had told you you always said no. So you decided that one year you would say yes to speaking engagements, graduation commencement speech, and so forth, So, what made you decide to say yes that one year? And are you happy you did? So? You know she did, she said, UM, one Thanksgiving, she just said, you never say yes to anything,

you know. I've been detailing all of these these invitations I've gotten, and that year, UM we were I was on the board of the Kennedy Center, and UM I had gone to I went to the Kennedy Center Honors and I was told, not asked, told that I was going to sit in the box with President Obama and Mrs Obama UM for the honors. And I did, and I had a wonderful time. And I didn't know them at the time, and I had a wonderful time, and

it was a lovely evening. But I realized on the way home that if somebody had asked me if I wanted to sit in the box with them, I would have said no. And I would have said no because I would have been too nervous. I would have been too afraid. I would have thought, why would they want to say with me? Well, you know, it was that thing of not having any of the confidence or the

nerves to do so. I would have absolutely turned it down because it would have been too stressful to have come up with the notion that I could possibly say yes. And that really sort of stunned me that I would have missed such an amazing experience and amazing opportunity, um, just because I was too nervous to do something. And so I decided, Yeah, I was going to try to spend a year saying yes to everything that scared me.

And the very first thing I was asked to do after that was to give a commencement speech at Dartmouth in front of ten thousand people. As a very successful woman, a single mother of three who constantly gets asked the question, how do you do it all? For once, I'm going to answer that question with honesty here for you now, because somebody has to tell you the truth, Shonda, how do you do it all? The answer is this, I don't you point out your book you've alshow adopted three

young girls? Is that more challenging than writing scripts or producing shows? Or is a much easier I always used to say, like, I say, three daughters and forty seven actors or something like that when I had three shows. Um, but no, I mean I feel like having children is far more difficult and far more fulfilling than any script, any job, any show. It's also far more fun. But I also think that the older you get and the more practice you get at it, the more fulfilling and

easy it becomes. You know, with your first child, you're always afraid, um, as my mother always said, your first child, joy is afraid you're going to kill the baby. With your last child, you can toss the baby downstairs and think, like she just bounces, She'll be fine, you know that in that way that my mother always used to say. But really, like children are such um doors to reality. They keep you grounded, and they really keep you focused

on the present, and that's the best thing ever. So when you're raising children in Hollywood, which I haven't done, but I know when you're raising children and you were wealthy and you're famous, it can be challenged. How do you keep your children grounded because they just could go out and say, my mother is this famous person? Or how do you avoid that? Um? Well, for the longest time,

my oldest daughter thought I ran a hospital. I mean she really did, Like I sort of kept her insulated from the idea that I had any job that anybody knew about it at all. Um And my youngest daughters. Now, you know, it's it's a little bit harder at this point, but I tried really hard to just raise my kids the same way I was raised, with the same values that I was raised with. You know, I'm from the Midwest. I still believe that you put poopons and you don't

throw things away. So you know, this is a town in which that's not really a thing that's valued. But I try to stick to the way I grew up, and I feel kind of lucky that I'm surrounded by some people who also feel that way. What do you do for rest and relaxation? I assume you must get

a little bit of it even though you're so busy. Okay, So I recently bought a cello um, probably because I saw Yo Yo Mom play the cello um and got really inspired by his his whole Box series that he's traveling around and I've been obsessed with him for a long time. But and for years I've been saying I'm gonna learn how to play the cello. I'm gonna learn how to play the cello, and I mean for like

fifteen years. So I finally went out and got myself a really nice cello, and I've started taking cello lessons. So that's my new way of relaxing. And it is wildly I mean, I'm terrible at it right now, but it is wildly relaxing to try something new in that way and to spend that sort of concentrated time doing something different. Um, why don't you come to the Kenny Center play a duet with yo Yo Ma? He can

arrange that. UM. I think that poor Yoyo would he would be very um horrified by by what was coming out of my cello. Now, what new worlds are there for you to conquer in the entertainment world. You're you're at the top of the profession. I can't imagine how you could be more successful. Is there something else that you are inspired to do that you haven't done yet? No,

I'm really enjoying my life at Netflix right now. You know, we've just I feel we've just gotten started there, and you know, I can't wait to keep building on that and and enjoy that and making new shows. They're working, you know, building on our podcast world. UM, enjoying those worlds is exciting to me. Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen