It’s handled: ‘Scandal’ team pledges ‘satisfying’ ending
Glancing inside stage 12 at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood on a recent midMarch day, a person could be forgiven for thinking a phone service ad was being shot: The smartphones are out and in serious use.
But this is what’s it’s like during a lunch break on the set of “Scandal,” which, as the show that helped fuse TV watching and Twitter thumb-tapping, has as deep a relationship with the personal device as any tech company. And this isn’t an ordinary early spring afternoon — just five days from now, this freight train of a political drama will screech to a halt when filming wraps, forever. As of Thursday’s finale, crisis manager Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and her band of cohorts will hang up their white hats.
So it’s little wonder that the cast is intent on keeping its digital scrapbook stocked. Selfies are being taken, and quick videos are being shot.
Created by prolific producer Shonda Rhimes, “Scandal” is a thoroughly modern nighttime soap. Centered on Pope, the first black female character to lead a network drama in nearly 40 years (and her heart-thumping love affair with President Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant played by Tony Goldwyn), “Scandal” premiered to little fanfare and middling reviews in spring 2012. But the decision to wed whiplash storytelling with the cast’s early adoption of social media, particularly Twitter, made the show a bona-fide hit and a symbol of hope for appointment television by the end of the second season.
Gathered around the show’s iconic OPA conference table, Rhimes and executive producer Betsy Beers, along with the sprawling cast — Washington, Goldwyn, Bellamy Young (Mellie), Katie Lowes (Quinn Perkins), Guillermo Diaz (Huck), Darby Stanchfield (Abby Whelan), Joshua Malina (David Rosen), Jeff Perry (Cyrus Beene), Scott Foley (Jake Ballard), Joe Morton (Rowan Pope), George Newbern (Charlie), and Cornelius Smith Jr. (Marcus Walker) — reflected on the show’s run.
Q: Is it ending the way you thought it would?
Rhimes: It’s ending exactly the way I thought it would, which is good because for a while there — it’s not an easy thing to do. So I think we thought, sitting in the writer’s room, are we going to make it in time? There’s only so many exits to get there. Are we going to do it correctly and do it right? And I feel like we got there.
Beers: I didn’t necessarily know what was going to happen exactly in the big sense. I had the experience (the cast) had. I try not to read the script until the table read. I thought it was amazing, and I thought in terms of the way — well, you’ll see. But it’s incredibly elegant and at least thinking about where we started, it’s a beautiful way to finish.
Rhimes: I think I should say it’s not as if I knew where we would end seven seasons ago. We ended the way I knew we were going to end when I figured it out a couple of months ago.
Morton: It was very satisfying. I think the was the ultimate feeling by the time we left the table read.
Q: How did you know it was time to end it — when did it all come together for you?
Rhimes: I don’t know if there’s a general answer to that because I have a show that’s still going 14 seasons later. I always knew the story had an endpoint. I also knew that I didn’t want this to be a show that stayed too long at a party, and I wanted to end while we were all still in it, while the story was still being told and told very well and we were all really excited about it. There was an evolution of these characters that you get to see happen and Olivia Pope had a place she was going. And when it was clear that we were getting there, it just felt organic.
Q: What are you most proud of that the show accomplished?
Young: Contributing to the big conversations that are in America and the world right now. “The Lawn Chair” (an episode that explored police brutality) being a perfect example … it never was afraid to take on what matters to people. It always tried to remember its audience. The show also realized that America, in particular, is going through a lot right now and it never shied away from being there as a sounding board.
Goldwyn: The thing that has always blown me away is that Shonda and our team of writers, who are amazing, seem to infuse the show in the most entertaining, fun, outrageous roller coaster ride kind of way, infuse it with conversations that Shonda — that they — want to have.
Smith Jr.: I think one of the things that is unique, and what I appreciate about the show, is that it highlights individual truths and also universal truths and melts them together in a way that is accessible and recognizable to pretty much anybody watching it.
Washington: I just want to add one more thing … I think in this town, there’s a lot of talk about how poorly behaved people in this business are, in particular actors … just how toxic work environments can be. One of the things that’s most important to me walking away from this is when we say we’re family, we’re not pretending. I can’t imagine having done these past seven seasons, doing it in a toxic work environment. It would have destroyed us all, (rather) than elevated us all.