She constructed her first Shondaland in the pantry. A white-hot flashing light behind my eyes.

“Here is what I remember about being interviewed by Oprah. She remembers nothing about getting interviewed by Oprah. But that when she actually had dinner with Toni Morrison, “all she wanted to talk about was Grey’s Anatomy.” She closed by telling the graduates that she once wanted to be Toni Morrison. Her first big “yes” was accepting the role as the commencement speaker at Dartmouth, her alma mater. She met Toni Morrison and all she wanted to talk about was Grey’s Anatomy. Second chances.Īs Papa Pope told his daughter Olivia: “You have to be twice as good to get half as much …” That is what you are building when you are an F.O.D. Second chances are for future generations.

We were literally changing the face of television. And America was proving them wrong by watching. I was doing a thing that the suits had said could not be done on TV. It was ours.” And then she referenced that pivotal moment when we meet Olivia Pope’s father on Scandal: “You can’t be raised black in America and not know,” she writes. “When you are an F.O.D.,” she writes, “you are saddled with that burden of extra responsibility - whether you want it or not.” She felt the pressure when she dodged questions about diversity or race. Rhimes felt the pressure of being a black, female showrunner, or what she calls an F.O.D. Red wine was the only joy in Shondaland.” “And at the end of every day, as a reward, I poured myself a glass of red wine. Olivia Pope gets her red-wine-drinking habits from Rhimes.Įven when she was riding high with Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, she writes that she was “miserable.” “Truly, deeply unhappy.” As such, she had one thing she turned to at the end of the day.

Welcome your new life coach, Shonda Rhimes. Quite simply, it’s a book about how she learned to take care of herself, and how you might be able to as well. Instead, there are small, charmingly odd, inspirational stories, like how she reacted to the Red Wedding scene in Game of Thrones to how writing Cristina Yang was writing the woman she hoped to become. There are no “What if?” casting scenarios. There are no VH1 behind-the-scenes moments explaining how Isaiah Washington was fired from Grey’s Anatomy or what went down with Columbus Short on Scandal. It is not a ribald tale spilling hot industry tea. In this way, Year of Yes is not a burn book. She spent more time with the people she loved, shed 127 pounds, and learned how to be a happier person. She said yes to commencement speeches, yes to accepting more help, and - you guessed it - yes to herself. For one year, one of the most powerful showrunners on television said yes to everything. Shonda Rhimes’s Year of Yes, available today, is less a memoir than it is a self-help book.

Shonda rhimes book yes