Shonda Rhimes

Shonda Rhimes (born January 13, 1970, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) is an American writer and producer who is best known for creating such popular TV series as Grey’s Anatomy (2005– ) and Scandal (2012–18).

Rhimes grew up in a Chicago suburb. After graduating from Dartmouth in 1991, she initially had dreams of becoming a novelist but ultimately attended film school at the University of Southern California. In 1998 she wrote and directed the short film Blossoms and Veils. The following year she penned the HBO TV movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, starring Halle Berry as the singer and actress who was the first Black woman to be nominated for a best actress Oscar. Rhimes next wrote screenplays for the feature films Crossroads (2002), a vehicle for pop singer Britney Spears, and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), a romantic comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews.

Rhimes subsequently turned her focus to TV series. Her first foray was a show about war correspondents, but only the pilot episode was made. Her breakthrough came when she created Grey’s Anatomy. The drama, which focuses on the professional and personal lives of surgeons, debuted in 2005 and was an immediate hit. In addition to its compelling story lines, the show garnered attention for its diverse cast, strong female characters, and interracial relationships, all of which became hallmarks of Rhimes’s series. In 2007 she created Private Practice, a spin-off of Grey’s Anatomy that ran until 2013. Another spin-off, Station 19, premiered in 2018 and aired for seven seasons before ending in 2024. Both shows were produced by ShondaLand, which Rhimes had established in 2005.

In 2012 Rhimes debuted the TV series Scandal, a drama starring Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, a Washington, D.C., political fixer who is also having an affair with the U.S. president (played by Tony Goldwyn). With its sometimes over-the-top, always fast-paced plots, the show was another huge success. It also marked the first time in some four decades that a network drama featured an African American woman in the lead role. Scandal ended in 2018. ShondaLand also had a hit with the legal drama How to Get Away with Murder (2014–20), starring Viola Davis. The success of these series was especially remarkable given the overall decline in viewers of network TV and helped make Rhimes one of the most powerful people in television. She later produced such shows as The Catch (2016–17), about a female investigator (Mireille Enos); Still Star-Crossed (2017), a Shakespearean-inspired drama that is set after the deaths of Romeo and Juliet; and For the People (2018–19), a legal drama.

All these shows aired on ABC, but in 2017 Rhimes signed a production deal with Netflix. ShondaLand’s first project for the media-streaming company was the hugely popular series Bridgerton (2020– ), based on historical romance novels by Julia Quinn. Rhimes herself later created the miniseries Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (2023). She also developed Inventing Anna (2022), a miniseries about a real-life con artist who pretended to be a German heiress.

In 2015 Rhimes published the self-help book Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun, and Be Your Own Person.