Shonda Rhimes revealed that one of her children just started watching Grey’s Anatomy for the first time, and the Shondaland creator has mixed reactions.
Rhimes, 54, shared an Instagram photo on Tuesday, March 26, of her unidentified daughter watching an episode on her iPad while eating a bowl of pasta in the kitchen.
“My not so tiny human started watching @greysabc for the first time yesterday,” Rhimes wrote in her caption. “My brain is breaking. 🤯 I am dead. DEAD. But so glad she’s getting to see the women her mom created.”
Rhymes has three daughters: Harper, 21, whom she adopted in 2002, Emerson,11, whom she adopted in 2012, and Beckett, 10, whom she welcomed via surrogacy in 2013.
Rhimes’ post inspired numerous responses, including comments from several celebrities.
Reese Witherspoon wrote, “This is Everything,” while Mindy Kaling responded, “I just love this so much.”
Rhimes created Grey’s Anatomy as the first in a series of TV shows she produced under her Shondaland production company. Now in its 20th season, Grey’s Anatomy debuted in March 2005. The series revolves around Dr. Meredith Grey, portrayed by Ellen Pompeo, progressing from surgical intern to fully-qualified doctor to the chief of general surgery at the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital, later named the Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.
Grey’s inspired two spinoffs: Private Practice from 2007 to 2013, and Station 19 which launched in 2018. The firefighter show’s seventh and final season premiered on March 14.
Rhimes’ credits also include Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder and Bridgerton, among others.
Her new Instagram post comes two years after she told the Wall Street Journal that her three daughters had never seen Grey’s Anatomy.
“My youngest daughters are 8 and 9, so they’re far too young to watch it or even care, which is good,” Rhimes said in a March 2022 interview. She also admitted that her oldest daughter Harper was not interested in watching the highly acclaimed show.
“I have a 19-year-old who finds it horrifying that I’ve written a show that all of her friends have seen multiple times. And so she has never seen it. And I have to say, I think that might be the best compliment ever,” Rhimes said.
“I think about it like, her mother wrote a show that tells all her friends what to think about love and sex. So she’s not interested in watching it, and I think that that’s a very good thing,” she added.
In a separate interview for Variety, Rhimes discussed Grey’s Anatomy legacy.
“The number of women who have become doctors because of that show is magical to me,” she said in a November 2021 interview. “The number of people who’ve come to me and told me that they learned how to do CPR, or figured out that they were having a heart attack because of that show, is magical to me.”
Rhimes also commented about employing more minorities as actors.
“Sadly, I think the legacy might simply just be that we made it possible for more people of color to have jobs on camera on television, which makes me embarrassed for television,” she said.
“It sounds arrogant to say it, but to me it makes me sad to have to say it,” Rhimes added. “We changed the faces that you see on television. And it should not have taken so long for that to happen.”
