Bridgerton creator Shonda Rhimes on the popularity of the Regency drama

When her school counsellor told her not to bother applying to Ivy League universities, she called her mother, who was there within 10 minutes. “She said, ‘Honey, sit right down in the lobby.’ Ten minutes later she came out of the office, had her coat on, her purse ready, and said, ‘You can go to any college you want.’ ”

Having spent her childhood reading books rather than watching TV, her original ambition was to write novels. After graduating in English from Dartmouth, the prestigious Ivy League college in New Hampshire, she decided she “couldn’t be Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison because Toni Morrison already had that job”. After hearing that the University of Southern California’s film school was apparently harder to get into than Harvard Law School, that was where she went next — only to then find herself an unemployed scriptwriter in Hollywood.

In 2001 she wrote CrossroadsBritney Spears’ debut film – but after 9/11 she “made a list of all the things I wanted to do, and at the top was adopt a baby”. Nine months and two days later, aged 32, she brought home her oldest daughter, Harper, now 21, whom she raised as a single mother. Confined at home with the baby, Rhimes fell in love with television and wrote Grey’s Anatomy.

About 20 million Americans watched season one in 2005. By season two the following year, one episode drew more than 37 million. The show has been a primetime weekly fixture for half of every year since then, making Rhimes the Oprah Winfrey of television drama. Her fan base only grew with Scandaland in interviews a decade ago she spoke about how much she loved engaging with fans online. But in 2015 she stood down as Grey’s Anatomy’s showrunner, and by last year was almost entirely off social media. What changed?

“Social media changed. Fans have passionate feelings, and I was always fine with that. I understand that the characters felt like their friends. They were my imaginary friends too. That’s why I was writing them. And I think people just had very strong feelings about what happened with their friends.” She pauses. “But then it became weird.”

“Social media changed. Fans have passionate feelings, and I was always fine with that. But then it became weird.”

SHONDA RHIMES

After each season finale of Grey’s Anatomy she had to have a police car parked outside her house for a week, due to death threats from fans unhappy with how she had ended that series. “They got mean. And you never knew who was going to really take offence in the wrong way.” She had to employ private 24-hour security at her house in LA, not because fans were endlessly bothering her for selfies. “No, it was because people are dangerous and strange.”

In 2012, she had adopted a second daughter, and had a third the following year by a surrogate. “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.” She stopped reading anything on social media, but fear for her security haunted her every minute and “affected a lot of things. 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.” In 2020 she left LA and moved her family to a state she won’t even name.

Rhimes’ whole life used to be about work. A single minute not spent working, she once said, felt like “wasting time”, but when I remind her of this she laughs. “I’m not like that any more, luckily. The pandemic changed everything. When I stopped going into the office I realised I’d been working so hard that I didn’t even realise how exhausted I was. I was so tired.”

Bridgerton hadn’t yet come out and she felt tyrannised by “the expectations of other people of what we were supposed to do for Netflix. And then I was, like, I’m supposed to be having fun! The whole reason I came to Netflix was because ‘this is going to be fun’.”

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Presented with unfamiliar free time by the pandemic, she says, sounding faintly embarrassed, “that translated into me having, like, hobbies. Which is fascinating to me because, honestly, in the old days the only hobby I could have named was sleeping. Not now.” Looking even more bashful, “I took up golf.”

When she adds that she has also taken up baking, I can’t keep a straight face. “I know!” Rhimes chuckles. “And I literally said the other day, I think I should start to learn how to make jam.”

Bridgerton and its spin-off series, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Storyare both filmed in England. “But here’s the beauty,” she says happily. “I don’t actually need to be on a set for the set to run. So I visit from time to time.” Although now able to prioritise her younger daughters, Emerson Pearl, 12, and Beckett, 10, “My theory of parenting is that I’m trying to raise a citizen. I’m not trying to raise a friend. I’m not trying to raise a kid that I’m going to keep forever.”

She hasn’t allowed them phones or social media, but doesn’t need a television policy because “they’re not even interested. They don’t watch it.” When she can get them to watch with her, she usually ends up annoying them by predicting every plotline. “They’re, like, Mom, can you please stop talking?”

She has a theory to explain the global blockbuster appeal of Bridgerton. “I think there’s this desire for something simpler, where there are rules to courting. We just said, how do you meet somebody? Well, back then you met somebody because you went to these balls, your parents talked and you had a dance. People seem to love that sort of order to a world, where the rules of love are so clear. There were rules of interaction, like a map, and that doesn’t exist any more. There are no rules of engagement now in anything.”

Bridgerton is the ultimate antidote to Tinder? “Exactly.”

Season three of Bridgerton is streaming on Netflix now.

The Sunday TimesUK

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