The Exact Moment Shonda Rhimes Knew She’d Made It

In ELLE’s monthly series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we spoke with Shonda Rhimes, the award-winning, trailblazing television creator, producer, and CEO of Shondaland. Rhimes is the first woman in history to create three TV dramas—Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, and Scandal—that ran for 100-plus episodes, and for five seasons, her shows dominated ABC’s Thursday night lineup. Then, in 2017, she left the network for Netflix, where she went on to create the worldwide sensation, Bridgerton, and its spinoff, Queen Charlotte, as well as Inventing Anna and producing other series and documentaries for the streamer. This month, Rhimes is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her book, Year of Yes, by releasing a new edition that includes seven additional chapters that detail the continued ways saying “yes” has changed her life. Below, she shares the boldest career move she ever made, what she hopes her legacy is, and the moment she knew she made it.

My first job was at Baskin-Robbins in Park Forest, Illinois. I scooped ice cream, I opened and closed the store, and I loved it because it was the social hangout—all the kids would come by. But I also loved it because I was a really sheltered kid, and the idea that I got to work in an ice cream store seemed magical to me. They let you eat all the ice cream you wanted, which meant that after three months I never wanted to see ice cream again. [Laughs.] But I still loved the job because I got to interact with a lot of great people.

When I was just out of film school and sort of struggling in Hollywood, I worked at a place that helped the mentally ill and unhoused find job skills and places to live. It was a difficult job because there were a lot of unmedicated individuals and a lot of people who were in really dark situations. But also it was so outside of anything I knew how to do. It was outside my comfort zone, and it forced me to confront really hard parts of life every single day. So when I say it was my worst job, what I mean is, it was the toughest job I’ve ever had. And I learned a lot from having that job, but it’s a job I never want to have again. I wish that that job didn’t need to exist, basically.

First, I was writing movies. I wrote Princess Diaries 2 and Crossroads, and I was writing some teen girl movies, like Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. And then I became a mom, and suddenly I was at home all the time, and I realized that all the really good character development and all the really good juicy storytelling was happening on TV and not in the movies. So I absorbed a bunch of television and went and told my agents, “I want to try to write television.” And they were like, “Okay.”

So I went off and I started working with ABC, and the first show I got in the air was Grey’s Anatomy. It was that crazy. I wrote something that was my lightning in a bottle my first time out, and I was not expecting that obviously. I was just expecting to try TV writing for a little while.

I’d had success—we had Grey’s and things were going along really well—but there was a moment when ABC gave me an entire night of television. On Thursday nights, I had Grey’s, Scandal, and we had How to Get Away with Murder. When I stood on stage at the television upfront and presented that lineup, it felt like a change. It felt like a moment where I as a woman realized the kind of power that I could have, and the kind of influence that I could have. Owning an entire night of television really cemented for me the fact that I was good at what I did, that I had some real power to wield, and I needed to wield it in a way that helped other people coming up behind me.

The boldest career choice I ever made was leaving ABC and going to Netflix. Simply because I’d been at ABC for my entire television career, and it was a very safe place. To then make a leap and do something completely different when I didn’t need to was a very bold thing to do and very much a moment of me deciding to believe in myself.

I never relaxed, but the moment I felt like I made it was when I was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame by Oprah Winfrey. That sounds like a really late time to realize that you’ve made it, but I was one of those people who never wanted to take anything for granted. I never wanted to believe that anything was a given. I always felt like I was working for everything. And it was at that moment when I thought, Okay, I can stop worrying that I’m not succeeding.

It also doesn’t help that I’m an incredibly competitive person, who’s very hard on myself and very driven. That was the first moment I thought, Take a breath and actually just enjoy this. Because all of that drive is great, but if you don’t ever take a moment to enjoy it, you’re never going to really feel it.

All of my characters are like me in some way. If they came out of my brain, in some way they’re like me. So there was a time when I would say Cristina Yang, and there was a time when I would say Bailey, and there’s a time when I would say Meredith; there’s a time when I would say Fitz, as in President Fitzgerald Kennedy in Scandal, and there’s a time I’d say Olivia, and a time I’d say Mellie. Other than Anna Delvey, I would say there’s a little bit of me in all of them.

But when I wrote young Queen Charlotte, maybe she was the most like me because I was exploring what it meant to be a woman coming into your power, what it meant to be an outsider, and what it meant to be passionate about what you were doing. So she felt like me.

I would most like to get lunch with Olivia Pope. I really would. I haven’t thought about it like that before, but that would be fascinating. I’m lucky enough that I get to spend time with the real-life Olivia Pope, Judy Smith, but Judy Smith doesn’t come with opera gloves and a fedora, so maybe Olivia would be even more fun.

I might’ve had 1,000 pinch-me moments. I was always so excited about every opportunity, because the business has always been so magical to me. I constantly feel like, “Oh my God, I work in this industry.” I still feel that way. I still think, I can’t even believe this is my life.

But to name just one: Very early in my career, right after I’d written Dorothy Dandridge, I was sent in for a meeting about being a screenwriter for a movie. It was with Gregory Hines, the tap dancer, and he was telling me about the movie, and it was just me and him in a room and he jumped up on his desk and he tap danced for me.

And I know the reason why I didn’t get the job is because my brain just went totally blank. I was like, “This is happening.” But I kind of couldn’t believe it. It was the most magical thing I’d ever seen, and I was like, “These opportunities don’t come to this girl from the Midwest,” but it did, and it was so cool.

I was a kid who dictated stories into a tape recorder and then tried to force my mom to type them up when I was 3 or 4. So I always knew that I wanted to be a storyteller, although as I talk about in my book, back then, I called it being a liar, because I’d make things up. I was a kid who played in my kitchen pantry made up stories about the cans of peas, and the little tomato paste cans, and had a whole world going in my imagination.

I want to be a cellist in the New York Philharmonic and play with Yo-Yo Ma. (I cannot play the cello.) I would love to be an LPGA player and play golf for a living. I’m terrible at golf, but I love doing it. And I still haven’t given up my dream that maybe I could be a professional tennis player like Venus or Serena Williams. That’s not going to happen, but it’s still a dream. I also really want to learn how to cook like a real chef.

Saying “yes” has changed my life in every way. The biggest yes that I’ve had was my decision to move across the country [from Los Angeles to a small New England town]. It was a big move—a pandemic move—but it was one of those things that literally changed every aspect of my life, including work, family, my relationships with friends—everything. And for the better. It was that idea of making a leap when you’re not sure what you’re leaping to, and I’m really proud of myself for making the leap. It’s been great.

When I was asked if I wanted to think about it, I started to really examine all the ways my life had changed in the past 10 years, and the changes were huge. I realized that where I was 10 years ago, and where I am now, are almost fundamentally different places.

Saying “yes” doesn’t stop. You don’t say “yes” for a while, then stop, and then your whole life is different and everything’s great. It’s really about a process of continuing to say “yes” and figuring out what those yeses are.

Year of Yes: 10th Anniversary Edition by Shonda Rhimes

I really do hope that readers take away the idea that a year of yes is not just a year. And I hope they take away the idea that anybody can change their lives. You don’t have to be a television writer to do the things that I did, and it doesn’t have to be that you’re giving a commencement speech to make a leap. There are so many small leaps and so many small yeses that we make in our lives that can completely transform us in ways we never expected. I think that for everyone, yes can be full of possibility.

I really hope that what comes from my success—and from the success of so many other women at this moment in time in this business—is that it stops being remarkable that women are successful. That it stops being remarkable that a person of color is successful. I would like that to be a given. That would be an amazing legacy.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.