For Shonda rhimes, deciding whether an idea is screen-worthy is easy. “We make shows that we want to watch,” she says of Shondaland, her production company. “If we don’t want to watch it, we don’t want to make it.” Since its founding in 2005, Shondaland has been behind some of television’s most popular shows, including “Grey’s Anatomy”, “Scandal”, “How to Get Away with Murder”, “Inventing Anna” and “Bridgerton”. “The Residence”, a new mystery drama on Netflix inspired by a book about the White House, may also reside among Ms Rhimes’s successes.
Few in the tv business can claim so many hits across different genres. Twenty years ago, on March 27th, “Grey’s Anatomy”, which follows clueless and competitive surgical interns, made its debut on abc, a broadcast network. It has since become the longest-running primetime medical drama in America. Last year it was the second-most-watched programme on streaming services there, racking up 48bn minutes of viewing. Meanwhile “Bridgerton”, a Regency-era romp, reigned as Netflix’s most popular original series in America. In 2020-24 Shondaland shows brought in $2.4bn in subscription and advertising revenue for streamers globally, according to Parrot Analytics, a data firm. Ms Rhimes is probably the most valuable person in tv that you have never seen on screen.
Her 20-year career in tv embodies the upheavals of the industry. She has adapted to the displacement of linear weekly dramas by bingeable, high budget streaming shows. In 2017 Netflix paid an estimated $100m-150m to lure her from abc in an exclusive deal (reportedly renewed in 2021 for $300m-400m).
Peter Nowalk, the creator of “How to Get Away with Murder”, reckons she is “the Michael Jordan of tv”, a once-in-a-generation star. The comparison is apt: screenwriting and sport share a lot. Raw talent is a key determinant of success in both fields, but not the only one. For anyone who dreams of making big hits on the small screen, her career is instructive.
The first lesson is to shoot for the spectacular. When Ms Rhimes was writing for network tv, stories were circumscribed by advertising breaks; she had to make the viewer “want to come back”, she says. As a result each act would close with a hook of some kind: a surprising revelation or moment of emotional turmoil.
Even though streaming shows mostly do not contain adverts, Ms Rhimes says her rule for scripts still involves having an exciting development “every ten pages”. Twisting plots are Shondaland’s hallmark; Ms Rhimes’s fondness for bombshells has been described, not always flatteringly, as “omg tv”. Viewers are unlikely to forget the episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” in which a patient arrived at hospital with a bomb in his chest, for example, or when Olivia Pope was kidnapped in “Scandal”.
The second lesson is to learn quickly from failure. Not all risks pay off, on screen or on court; Ms Rhimes had several projects at abc that were rejected or quickly cancelled. In the early 2000s a pilot about female war correspondents was not picked up; nor was “Gilded Lilys”, a period drama, in 2012. “Still Star-Crossed” (2017) unsuccessfully imagined a sequel to Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”; one reviewerwrote that its cancellation would not “evoke much sorrow.
But Ms Rhimes learned from these setbacks. The show about war correspondents was pitched soon after the Iraq war had begun, at a time when the industry was lukewarm about dramas set in conflict zones; Ms Rhimes says this prompted her to think more carefully about what tastemakers wanted. She had heard that Bob Iger, then the president of Disney (which owns ABC), was seeking a medical show, so she devised “Grey’s Anatomy” instead.
The third lesson is to time your moves well. In the early 2000s Ms Rhimes worked in film, but felt that tv was becoming the home of character-driven storytelling, with shows such as “The Wire” and “Lost”. She pitched “Grey’s Anatomy” just as tv was becoming more ambitious. A decade later Ms Rhimes says she realised that streaming “was where the future of television was going to be” and that an arms race for content was beginning. Netflix, determined to stock its arsenal, doubled its annual content budget to around $12bn from 2017-18.
Like some of her shows’ heroines, Ms Rhimes was in the right place at the perfect time. The first show Shondaland made for Netflix, “Bridgerton”, arrived in December 2020. After lockdowns, audiences were eager for a fanciful escape—a world with fewer face masks and more dapper dukes. Some 80m households watched the romance in its first month. Its multiracial cast was ideally timed for the political moment, in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests and calls for greater diversity
Ms Rhimes’s programmes often feel fresh and norm-breaking, but in many ways her firm is not. Its structure “harks back to the very traditional, old-fashioned studio model”, says Alice Thorpe of Ampere Analysis, a research firm, whereby a single person oversees a roster of trusted directors, producers and writers. Ms Rhimes does so from a distance: she lives and works in Connecticut, on America’s east coast, and the firm is based in Los Angeles. She delegates responsibilities, she says, in order to focus on “the one thing I know that Netflix needs from me and me alone, which is the creative part”.
She is also expanding in directions other media firms have ventured before. Disney, for example, has used its popular films and tv series to sell toys and trinkets for children; Shondaland is mimicking that model, just for adults. (She pushed buy themed crockery, make-up, rugs, tea and wedding dresses; no other hit drama has such a visible presence in
American and British shops.
“We stopped just storytelling and started world-building,” Ms Rhimes explains. Whenever a script comes in, executives think up ancillary offerings, from tie-in podcasts to products. They are also investing in live experiences, including “Bridgerton” balls, where fans come to dances in fancy dress. This is a broader trend in tv: Netflix is launching immersive experiences, including a restaurant in Las Vegas where patrons can eat food from their favourite shows. In the streaming age, when there is so much choice—and a long lag between lavishly produced seasons—such offerings keep shows relevant.
Broadcasters and streamers are no doubt eager to find the next Shonda. But that will prove more challenging than, say, getting away with murder. With network tv declining, broadcasters are unwilling to gamble on rookies. “It’s hard to be the first-time writer selling a show now because so much revenue goes into established outfits” such as Shondaland, says Michael Szalay of the University of California, Irvine. In the wake of the pandemic and the Hollywood strikes, streamers are also becoming more parsimonious, even with well-known writers and creators. There has been “a notable drop-off” in the number of production deals that Netflix has signed, according to Ms Thorpe. But for now, Netflix and its viewers do
not seem ready to see Ms Rhimes pass the ball.
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