Shonda Rhimes suffered sleepless nights due to stress after being deluged with death threats over social media.
The TV producer-writer has admitted she feared for her safety while she was working on medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” because of all the nasty messages she was receiving online. It prompted her to hire 24-hour security guards while she was living in Los Angeles.
“Social media changed. Fans have passionate feelings, and I was always fine with that … But then it became weird … They got mean. And you never knew who was going to really take offense in the wrong way … It was because people are dangerous and strange,” she told The Sunday Times.
The mother of three stopped reading posts on social media, but she was kept awake at night worrying about her family’s security.
“I wanted to just be able to walk out my front door and hang out with my kids and not be worried. I would lay awake at night with stress,” The “Bridgerton” mastermind said.
“[It] affected a lot of things,” she went on. “And I had some very helpful friends who’d had similar experiences, who were able to give me a lot of perspective, and who were adamant that if you can’t live normally then you’re not going to be able to live.”
Rhimes eventually decided to move away from Los Angeles in 2020 and won’t make public the state where she now resides with her kids. She went on to admit she’s now even considering moving abroad.
