“It feels exciting to offer these great shows on one night,” shares the prolific showrunner Rhimes, 44. “You’re on the edge of your seat in a three-hour block of time on Thursday nights.
‘How to Get Away With Murder’ is a very sexy, fast-paced look at the law. [This Thursday lineup] is very daring. If you like great drama, it’s where you come.”
“It will keep you on your toes and keep you guessing,” offers Davis.
While the actors’ expertise, the rapid-fire dialogue and the witty lines play a major role in why we’re hooked on these daring Thursday night prime-time shows, they aren’t the only reasons we feel compelled to tune in weekly to catch the latest episode. We’re also engaged up-to-the-minute because we don’t want to be one-upped, we want to be part of the conversation, and many of us actually want to lead the next day’s commentary at the water cooler.
To delay watching and postpone tuning in to the divinely appointed “TGIT” is sacrilegious. ABC’s president, Paul Lee, dubbed Thursdays, TGIT (an acronym for Thank God It’s Thursday) for a reason. It’s where saints and sinners coexist.
A TV powerhouse, Rhimes is the “first black woman in Hollywood to create and produce a top series (‘Grey’s Anatomy’)” as critics like to remind us. She runs her own production company, ShondaLand, alongside Betsy Beers. While she is the creator of both “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal,” she executive produces “How to Get Away With Murder,” which is the brainchild of protégé Peter Nowalk, a writer and producer who honed his skills at ShondaLand, which inked a multimillion dollar deal with ABC Studios/Disney last year.
Rhimes tells the L.A. Times, “I know it’s an incredible amount of trust that’s being placed on me; I get that. … But I’m not really thinking about, ‘Oh, I’m the Thursday queen.’ Uh … no. I’m thinking, ‘Grey’s’ has to be good, ‘Scandal’ has to be good, and ‘Murder’ has to be damn good.”
With that said, she isn’t resting on her laurels, but she is twiddling her thumbs on her smartphone engaging across social media platforms, including Twitter, where she has more than 740,000 followers. She isn’t allowing reality TV shows to outpace her in Nielsen ratings.
Rhimes has applied the same live-tweeting formula to “How to Get Away With Murder” that was used with its predecessor, “Scandal.” Cast members and other show principals engage fans on Thursday nights procuring and inciting comments about the aha moments and awe-inspiring scenes. Even “Grey’s Anatomy,” the oldest in the family, which is in its 11th season, adopted this strategy. Rhimes has brought the trio together for a joint social media posting session.
“HTGAWM” tweeted all summer in advance of its fall launch, building buzz and excitement.
It worked.
The series topped both “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” in total viewers.
The network made a recent announcement that full-season orders had been given to the freshman series. “HTGAWM” has been extended to 15 shows for this season. While a series normally runs for 22 episodes, “Murder” star Viola Davis could only sign for a limited number of shows due to her work schedule.
Unapologetic for Diversity and Inclusion
Rhimes’ rise up the ranks to top producer hasn’t come without criticism.
Modest about breaking race and gender barriers with her casting, the adoptive mother of three daughters also doesn’t take too kindly when critics and detractors use labels like “angry black woman” and “gay scenes.”
A viewer tweeted to Rhimes, “the gay scenes in scandal and how to get away with murder are too much. There is no point and they add nothing to the plot.”
Rhimes responded, “There are no GAY scenes. There are scenes with people in them.”
“If you are suddenly discovering that Shondaland shows have scenes involving people who are gay, you are LATE TO THE PARTY,” she tweeted next.
As for the New York Times “angry black woman” column that opened with the line, “When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called ‘How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman,’ ” Rhimes had this response when she was interviewed by “Good Morning America’s” Robin Roberts, “In this world in which we all feel we’re so full of gender equality and we’re a post-racial [society] and Obama is president, it’s a very good reminder to see the casual racial bias and odd misogyny from a woman written in a paper that we all think of as being so liberal.”
She doesn’t mince words about her casting and vision, “I feel like the television landscape should look like the world we see outside. The package that people come in is the package that they come in. What’s inside is what’s the most interesting thing.”
Ain’t no party like a Shonda Rhimes party.
It’s a feat to command the most lucrative night of programming on TV. The secret is out. Rhimes organically connects to fans through social media engagement and has managed to amass same-day viewership of 37 million, collectively, among the trio of shows.
Story by Yvette Caslin
Images by ABC Studios
