The Disruptor
Contrarian and drawn to the edge; challenges the settled answer.
Shonda Rhimes reads as The Disruptor because she systematically dismantled television's unwritten rules about who belongs at the centre of a story. She cast Black women as leads in prime-time network dramas before the industry considered it commercially viable, then walked away from a historic ABC deal to bet on Netflix when that move looked genuinely risky.
“Well, it wasn't just as a creator. I have a company. And I wanted to pick my company up and take it someplace else. I took 30 people with me. But it's also not like we left it behind. I have six shows. Over at ABC, it really was about doing something new and trying something new after being someplace for 15 years.”
“No, I definitely think of myself as more of a businesswoman now. And I've had to simply because I've had to learn what's important and what's not in terms of not getting screwed financially. There's a lot of people in this town who don't know what the value of their work is.”
“You know, it's always going to be that way. If you think about the fact that every time a female-driven movie comes out and it does well, there is just shock that people went to see a movie about women and they were funny or people went to see a female movie driven movie and it was an action movie and people went to see it.”
“I like people with their own opinions, and I like people who argue with me. It's very exhausting to be in a room full of people who just nod and smile or agree with you, whatever you say. It's important to have people who are absolutely willing to say you're wrong or who have a totally different perspective than you do on everything.”
The David Rubenstein Show: “Shonda Rhimes”
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