Shonda Rhimes: the force behind Grey's Anatomy

IN theory, it probably shouldn't even be on television. After all, ER, a longtime ratings winner, has started seeing audience erosion as reality and cable TV medical shows proliferate.

But ABC believed in Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Grey's Anatomy. That's why the show not only got the green light as a mid-season replacement series last January, but it also became an instant hit.

The show, a medical drama set in a Seattle hospital focuses on the day-to-day struggles associated with those who are trying to become doctors. What sets Grey's Anatomy aside from other medical shows is its mixture of medicine and a large dose of personal relationships. (The show features Isaiah Washington, Patrick Dempsey, Sandra Oh, Justin Chambers, T.R. Knight, Chandra Wilson, James Pickens Jr., Katherine Heigl and Ellen Pompeo.)

"I'm a medical junkie," says Rhimes, who created the series and also serves as writer and executive producer. "I love to watch all those surgeries on the Discovery Channel and TLC (The Learning Channel). And I thought there was something really sexy about surgery in the sense that they're kind of cowboys. It's the only job where you literally hold a beat of a heart in your hands. On a bad day, you'll kill someone, and on a good day you save lives."

Rhimes, a 30something Chicago native, points out that she got a chance to go into hospitals and observe surgeries taking place. "I thought that was thrilling! When you're standing over a table and looking into someone's body, you can be so fascinated by the workings of the human body."

Grey's Anatomy is literally her product from start to finish. She offers that a movie is a director's product for the public. "If you watch a movie that I've written [she's scripted numerous hit movies], chances are it's not what was in my head. It's what's in the director's head. That's not a bad thing, but with this show, every episode is what was in my head. So, I feel very gratified creatively."

Sure, the series is a collaborative effort, but Rhimes still has the ultimate say. She approves the scripts from the writers, participates in the casting and selects all the music used in the show.

And she makes sure the show represents the diversity of her world, pointing out that there can be a Black chief of surgery and numerous women about to become surgeons. "That's the real world," she says. "And with casting, I don't care what color they are. If a Black man comes in and he's great for a part and a White woman comes in and she's great for the part of his wife, well then, suddenly it's an interracial couple. And I don't care. It's about who's the most talented getting the parts."

Rhimes is a polite, low-key professional who loves the collaborative process. However, she does have a steely determination to avoid stereotypes and deliver positive messages. During the early days of the production, she recalls issuing what she called a "mandate."

"I remember everybody in the room looking at me like I was crazy," she says. "But I was like, 'There will never be any Black drug addicts on our show. There will never be any Black hookers on our show. There will never be Black pimps on our show.' A lot of shows feel the need and enjoy stereotyping, and we're going the other way. [Perpetuating stereotypes] isn't something I'm interested in promoting."

What she is interested in promoting is good writing and good, motivational stories. Writing has been her world since growing up in the Chicago suburb of Park Forest South. She utilized her love for the written word at Dartmouth College, where she wrote fiction. After graduating, she says she was in a quandary. "I got out of college and my mother, who is a university professor, and my father, who is a university administrator, were like, 'Please do something with your life other than starve as a writer,'" she remembers.

So she moved to San Francisco, where an older sister lived (she is the youngest in a family with three older sisters and two older brothers) and took a job in advertising. It paid money, and she got a chance to write, but the problem was she hated it. "I was basically writing stuff that people turn away from," she says. "So ! thought I'd apply to film school. I applied and got into USC and really loved it."

She recalls it was an exciting time when Spike Lee was making well-received movies, Whoopi Goldberg was a hit on Broadway, and Bill Cosby was television's biggest star.

However, success didn't embrace her overnight. Sure, she had an agent after graduating, but little else. She worked as an administrator and later at a center that taught mentally ill and homeless people job skills. The latter job was rewarding and offered her enough flexibility to contemplate writing. However, she says, it was across the street from a crack cocaine house.

Luckily, her writing skills soon began impressing the powers-that-be in Hollywood. "I wrote a script and it went on the market in the morning, and I thought if it didn't sell by the afternoon I was going to leave Los Angeles and do something else. I was tired of being hungry, tired of starving. At the end of the day, it sold."