Shonda Rhimes: ‘We Do Not Push Boundaries’

Norman Weiss September 24, 2015, 8:48 pm

Shonda Rhimes: “We do not push boundaries”

“I always dispute the concept that we push boundaries. We do not push boundaries,” Rhimes says of her TGIT shows, which have been called boundary-pushing. “I feel like we play very creatively within the fences that we’ve always had. I respect the fact that we have these fences. It’s a really awesome challenge to do stuff creatively within them. I feel like we have a really good relationship. I don’t believe that it’s adversarial. We’ve been working with the same people for years and years and years. They are smart. It’s not as if they’re out to get anybody. They have a job to do, and we have a job to do. I happen to like debating, and I like to debate like a lawyer, and I can argue any points to death, and I will. But I really do feel like there is an attempt right now, just in general, to maybe push the line back a little bit. I think in our country, we’re so oddly puritanical about the wrong things.” PLUS: Play the Shondaland drinking game, why Rhimes dropped 98 pounds over the past year, Rhimes talks about Shondaland’s music, Debbie Allen calls Rhimes “the real Khaleesi,” and Rhimes talks feminism and police brutality with Elle magazine

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell submits to a 60 Minutes interview

Steve Kroft is profiling the controversial commissioner, but it’s hard to know how hard-hitting the interview will be since CBS is an NFL partner. No word on when the Goodell profile will air. PLUS: New Orleans Saints uses a Parks and Rec GIF to respond to the suggestion it should part ways with Drew Brees.

Olivia Pope encounters the Pope

Scandal’s Kerry Washington was on hand on the streets of New York City tonight when Pope Francis rode by.

Fox buys Pitbull’s 305, a drama set in a Miami private school

Named after Miami’s area code, the drama will follow a poor high school student who ends up going to the city’s wealthiest private school.

The O.C. fans melt down over today’s Ben McKenzie/Adam Brody baby news

“Seth and Ryan baby news on the same day?” one Twitter user wrote. “The only way this could be better would be if they were having babies with each other.”

See Jon Hamm as “Don Grouper” on SpongeBob SquarePants

Hamm will reprise his Mad Men role for a SpongeBob episode airing next year.

The Talk topped The View in the key women’s demo for the first time

Last season, The Talk edged out The View among women ages 25-54.

Empire and Black-ish show why there needs to be deep minority representation within individual shows

As James Poniewozik points out, “series like Black-ish and Empire can pass a sort of racial version of the Bechdel Test, the feminist-criticism measure of whether a story has two female characters who talk to each other about something besides a man: having minority characters talk about race in a way that’s not always in relation to white people.” PLUS: With Empire, TV is finally tackling the intersection of race and class, and Empire has become the most aggressively political soap in TV history.

Portlandia’s 6th season isn’t Halloween-themed, but…

Fred Armisen used the following words to describe Season 6: “Monsters, weirdos, Goth, Dracula, Danzig, graveyard, haunted mansion, cobwebs, black, white makeup, top hats, hearses, coffins, corpses, vampires, blood, cadavers, snakes, bats, chandeliers, creaky staircases.”

Mindy Kaling’s new book tops the NY Times bestseller list

Why Not Me? is No. 1 this week.

Just 3 years ago, Kenan & Kel were estranged

In the wake of Jimmy Fallon’s Kenan & Kel reunion, Us Weekly dug up quotes from 2012 in which Kel Mitchell said of Kenan Thompson: “The truth is Kenan does not want to be seen with me in any form of media, or even have my name mentioned around him. I have not been upset about this.” PLUS: Kenan & Kel became friends again after they both became fathers.