Oprah Has OWN and Shonda Rhimes Has ABC
Shonda Rhimes is a screenwriter, director, producer, and the first African-American woman to create and executive produce a top-ten network series. Scandal is her next great creation. It is truly one of the greatest television shows to ever exist. It is a political thriller who’s lead character is an African American lawyer named Olivia Pope, played by Kerry Washington. On this show everyone has a secret and Olivia Pope has dedicated her life to protecting and defending the public images of the nation’s elite and keeping those secrets under wraps. Revered and feared at the same time, Olivia, a former communications director to the President of the United States, left the White House to open her own prominent crisis management firm. She is hoping to start a new chapter in her life, both professionally and personally, but she can’t seem to completely cut ties with her past. Slowly it becomes apparent that her dysfunctional staff, who specializes in fixing other people’s lives, but can’t quite fix their own. It comes on every Thursday night, check-outyour local listings for show times.
When her drama Grey’s Anatomy in 2005, it was immediately embraced by critics and audiences. Rhimes simply believes in choosing the best person for any given role. “I’m a post–Civil Rights baby. I’m not trying to make a point. This is just the way the world looks now,” she says. “I don’t spend my days dealing with the fact that I’m a black woman as much as I do dealing with the fact that I’ve got work to do and I’m in charge.”
Rhimes was born in Chicago and grew up in south suburban University Park, one of six siblings. Her father is a university public information officer; her mother, a college professor. As a teenager, Rhimes had been inspired by The Cosby Show. Seeing a black family on television “was a really big deal at the time I was growing up,”.
After receiving a BA from Dartmouth College in English literature and creative writing, Rhimes took a job in advertising. She hated it, quitting after a year. She moved to California and earned an MFA from the University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinema-Television—where she won the prestigious Gary Rosenberg Writing Fellowship. Soon after, she sold her first screenplay, Human Seeking Same, about an older black woman who finds love through the personal ads. The film was never made, but Rhimes went on to write the screenplays for the short film Blossoms and Veils (1998) and the feature films Crossroads (2002), with Britney Spears, and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), starring Julie Andrews. She also worked as research director on the documentary Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream, which was nominated for an Emmy Award and an Academy Award.
Rhimes did not especially enjoy writing for the big screen; the completed films were not what she had initially envisioned. She was happier working in television, where she could have more control over her work. In 1999 she earned her first wide recognition for her teleplay for the HBO biographical film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, with Halle Berry portraying the beautiful, strong-willed actress whose career and love life were tragically affected by racism in the fifties.
After the tragic events of 9/11, Rhimes, who had long wanted to be a mother, called a lawyer and began the proceedings to adopt a child. After her daughter Harper Lee was born, Rhimes said, “I can’t remember what I did with my time before she got here.”
Staying at home with her infant daughter, Rhimes watched a lot of television. She was bored by the women she saw on television, who seemed to exist “purely in relation to the men in their lives.” Determined to present a realistic picture of women who were competitive “and a little snarky” at times, she wrote the pilot for Grey’s Anatomy. She chose to write about a hospital partly because she had a tendency to watch real-life surgery on the Discovery Channel and partly because she had enjoyed her days as a teenage candy striper at a hospital in Illinois.
Grey’s Anatomy was honored with a Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series and won a 2006 Writers Guild Award for Best New Series. For her work on Grey’s Anatomy, Rhimes received the 2007 Television Producer of the Year award from the Producers Guild of America as well as a Lucy Award for Excellence in Television from Women in Film and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Dramatic Series. In September 2007, the Grey’s spin-off Private Practice on the same network.
“I really try to make a show that I would want to watch. If I don’t want to watch it…it doesn’t go in the show. Part of that is [creating] very specific characters—great, interesting personal stories. And a large part of that is romance. We all want the fantasy.” By Shonda Rhimes.
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Jason Buchanan, Rovi -http://www.aoltv.com/celebs/shonda-rhimes/2042554/biography
http://www.shemadeit.org/meet/biography.aspx?m=165
http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/scandal/about-the-show
Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
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