One word turned ShondaLand into a realm of possibilities
Consider Year of Yes your passport to ShondaLand, an intense, colourful, contrary place that’s exciting to visit — but you wouldn’t want to live here.
Shondaland is the production company and inner world of the fabulously named and massively talented Shonda Rhimes, the most powerful woman in network television.
Creator, producer, head writer and control-freak showrunner of such seductive screen addictions as Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder, Rhimes promotes racial and gender diversity in her characters and has enhanced our lexicon with gladiate, getting Poped and the unforgettable vajayjay.
Despite her colossal success, Rhimes, 45, says she felt unfulfilled.
Hence the Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person.
Having often declined invitations for speeches or interviews, she decided to say yes to every offer, no matter how far out of her comfort zone, for a full year.
Rhimes begins her year of yes with a college commencement address to 16,000, which she calls terrifying (even though she used to act onstage with a theatre group).
Next comes an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, which she also describes as nerve-racking (despite insisting it be pretaped and despite having appeared on Oprah).
Contrarily, Rhimes’ year of yes also contains many no’s: no to working weekends, no to toxic people and no to marriage, even with a man who adored her and her three daughters (two adopted, a third born through surrogacy).
She also said no to her compulsive overeating, dropping an impressive 117 pounds.
It’s hard to take this book as any kind of self-help guide or wallflower-to-powerhouse makeover.
Rhimes, a force to be reckoned with long before her year of yes, still seems conflicted, just like her iconic TV characters.
She also reminds us often that she makes stuff up for a living: “I lie. A lot.”
Still, Year of Yes is a breezy, just-you-andme-girlfriend whirl through the realm of a type-A, obsessive, introspective and brilliant workaholic who likes nothing better than to tell a good story.
“Hell,” she writes, “I don’t own Thursday nights for nothing.”