Shonda Rhimes on How to Create Stories (and Products) People Want

with @shondarhimes @pmarca The creator of hit shows like Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and others, writer and executive producer Shonda Rhimes shares lessons she's learned about pitching ideas, storytelling, leadership, and scaling a business across mediums.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Sonal?

  Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6andZ Podcast. I'm Sonal. Today's episode, which was originally recorded at our most recent annual innovation summit in Los Angeles, features A6andZ co-founder Marc Andreessen interviewing prolific writer and executive producer Shonda Rhimes, who will also premiere new content on Netflix along with an original slate of podcasts in 2020. So, very fitting to be sharing that here. The episode that follows covers the challenges all creative founders face, whether for Hollywood show business, or Silicon Valley tech companies, or elsewhere, from scaling themselves beyond one person, to figuring out how and when to use data or follow their intuition, and much, much more.

• 0:41Marc Andreessen?

  Hey, everybody. Thank you all for being here today. Shonda, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for asking. We know you live a fairly busy life, and so it's a big deal to get here tonight. We're just thrilled to talk to you. So, I'd like to start with a show of hands. How many people in this audience have seen the TV show, a little independent TV show on a little obscure network called Grey's Anatomy? Is that right? Wow. Keep the hands up. Let's keep the hands up. And then who, on top of that, who has seen the TV show Scandal?

• 1:08Marc Andreessen?

  And then on top of that, let's put up for How to Get Over with Murder. There we go. I see two hands up in the front. Fantastic. I'm a little concerned. I know who that is, and the fact that she's seen that show makes me a little nervous.

• 1:22Marc Andreessen?

  So, I'd like to start by quoting a TED Talk. So, in your words, I think how you actually introduced yourself and described what you do in a TED Talk a few years back. So, quote, "Three shows in production at a time, sometimes four. The budget for one episode of network television can be anywhere from $3 to $6 million." Let's say five. "A new episode made every nine days, times four shows." So, every nine days, that's $20 million worth of television. "Four television programs, 70 hours of TV, three shows in production at a time, sometimes four, 16 episodes going on at all times, $350 million a season in budget. My television shows are back-to-back-to-back on Thursday night. All around the world, my shows air

• 2:04Marc Andreessen?

  in 256 territories and 67 languages for an audience of 30 million people." I think this gives us some stuff to talk about. So, this is a conference about builders, about builders, about people who build things, people who create things, people who create products, people who create companies, create experiences. In Silicon Valley, when we talk about the building process, we talk about it in two phases, going from what we call zero to one, which is creating something from scratch for the first time. And then we talk about the process of going from one to N, right? Doing that thing then repeatedly.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:39Marc Andreessen?

  Which is a whole nother challenge. So I'd love to talk about both parts of that in your career. And so the zero to one part is, how do you go from having no shows on network television to having one show on network television?

• 2:52Speaker 02

  That is the lightning in a bottle thing. You know, it's having the idea that sparks something for somebody that, you know, nobody else has had, that you don't know is gonna work, and you're working your tail off, you know, day in and day out. It's making the pitch, it's getting in the room, and then it's doing the work and hoping it works. And as somebody who had never had any experience in television before, you know, it's hard for me to say how it doesn't work, which is an odd thing. You know, for a lot of people, it's, they started as a staff writer and they worked their way up, they worked their way through the business, and then they get their own show. I thought, I'd been writing movies, and I thought, I'd like to write a television show,

• 3:36Speaker 02

  and I wrote Grey's Anatomy. And it really did work that way, and so I went from zero to 60 very quickly, which was terrifying.

• 3:45Marc Andreessen?

  What was the process? And I should describe for the audience, we'll talk about this more later, but you did work in film.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:51Marc Andreessen?

  My favorite credit on your IMDb is that, you know which one I'm gonna say, right? That you, in fact, the screenwriter for the Britney Spears highlight movie, Crossroads.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  If you have a teenage daughter, she's seen it.

• 4:03Marc Andreessen?

  A hundred percent. And maybe if you haven't.

• 4:09Marc Andreessen?

  So you had worked in film, you were successful in film, you had credits and so forth, you had had projects made. How did you, what was the process of going from that to being in the room pitching Grey's Anatomy? Like, how did that work?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Basically, I had a child. And I was stuck at home suddenly, because when you have a child, you cannot leave your house. And I started watching television, which I hadn't really been doing before, and realized that all of the really great character development that I had been really wishing for in movies was happening on television. I watched 24 Hours of 24, in 24 Hours, like, it was that fast, and thought, like, wow, this is interesting. And so, really went to my agents and said, can I have a chance at doing this? And, you know, went to the meetings, started thinking up ideas, started pitching, you know, did the work of research, figuring out what was gonna work, pitched an idea, didn't have that one go, pitched another idea, I think I pitched maybe three ideas, and

• 5:05Speaker 02

  they said, sure, like, do this one.

• 5:08Marc Andreessen?

  Right. And medical dramas, obviously, have been a staple of television for a long time, and there have been many famous ones, well-regarded ones. What was it about the idea of a medical drama that you felt like you could make it, you felt like it was sort of a pre-established concept at the generic level, but something that you could make special?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Well, there were two things. One, I had done these ideas, and I'd pitched them, and they hadn't worked, and it hadn't worked, and so I said, well, what does Bob Iger want? Because, really, know what your customer wants.

• 5:36Marc Andreessen?

  And this is literally Bob, this is ABC.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  This is ABC.

• 5:38Marc Andreessen?

  Literally. Not figure-to-be Bob Iger, literally.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, literally, what does Bob Iger want? And they said, he really wants a medical show. And I thought, okay. So, one, it was about that. I really wanted to make something that they wanted. And then it was about making something that I wanted to see. Like, I was an audience that I knew, if I made something I wanted to see, I was gonna be passionate about it. And so, I started talking to young, female surgical residents about what their lives were like. And I'd been watching all those, like, weird surgery shows that used to be on TLC, where they would remove, like, giant tumors from people. And I thought that was super interesting. And melding those two ideas really came together. I was a woman, I was interested in surgery, you know, the idea of surgery, why would I be writing about a dude? Like, it didn't make any sense to me.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  It felt like it made sense to me to write about, you know, young people entering this new profession and to make it a woman and then to make it a bunch of different kinds of people.

• 6:33Marc Andreessen?

  Okay, so then, obviously, Grey's Anatomy, they bought it. It went very well. It's still on the air, season 16 on the air.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  We just shot a 350th episode.

• 6:40Marc Andreessen?

  Not that many shows make it to 16 seasons?

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yes, not very many at all.

• 6:44Marc Andreessen?

  Gunsmoke?

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, MASH.

• 6:46Marc Andreessen?

  MASH.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:48Marc Andreessen?

  Grey's Anatomy. So, not bad. So, okay, so for a lot of people, that would have been, obviously, that was a big success. For a lot of people, that would have been a career-defining success and maybe the definition of somebody's career. How did you make the decision to go from having one show on the air to over time having two and then three and then ultimately an even larger number?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  I used to jokingly say I want to take over the world through television. And it, I'll be honest in this room, it was not a joke for me. I really thought like, I want to take over the world through television. Like, if I'm going to do something, I want to be really good at it. And that had been my first show, so it felt like a fluke and I didn't want it to feel like a fluke to me. So I wanted to do more. But also, it was this feeling of, you know, in the beginning, you made a show and it had gone for one season or two seasons, three seasons. I thought, well, we could get canceled at any minute. This could go away at any second. I need a second line. So it really was about finding like another show just in case. It was, you know, that thing of like, keep something else going.

• 7:45Marc Andreessen?

  Right. And so I would imagine you were flat out, working on Grey's at the time, how do you kind of then create for yourself, for yourself the time, but then also the organization around you to be able to then do more than one?

• 7:55Speaker 02

  In the beginning, it was about like overworking myself almost to the point of full-out exhaustion, not really understanding what needed to be done. And then it really was figuring out how to build the infrastructure. You know, I had a non-writing, producing partner, which was really helpful. Then it was taking the people who I'd worked with for a long enough time and, you know, spreading them out to understand like, you guys go be where I can't be because I already trust you. And getting the talent pool large enough and training people enough to the way I thought so that if I wasn't there looking, they were. And trusting people. You have to, you cannot do a job like that if you don't trust the people around you. Otherwise, you're going to be trying to do everything and that's going to flatten you very quickly.

• 8:37Marc Andreessen?

  Right. So a lot of people who have one hit do try to create production companies and they do try to scale like that. Most of them aren't able to do it?

• 8:45Speaker 02

  I think a lot of people are able to do it if other people are the creators. You know, if you have other creators, it's a lot easier because it's not all on you. For me, I had Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, and Scandal all going at the same time for a while, and that was, that was brutal.

• 8:59Marc Andreessen?

  Right, right. Today, you have how many shows on the air in total?

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Um.

• 9:02Marc Andreessen?

  And in production?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  I think we have five shows in production right now.

• 9:07Marc Andreessen?

  Could you maybe walk us through a day in the life?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  You know, now I have a company that has, I think there are 38 of us, or maybe 40 of us, working at my company. I now have a full-scale, basically, mini-studio with a head of production, a head of post-production, a head of content, a head of digital content, a head of branding. So we have like this great group of people. So for me, it's about coming in, I have an executive team, I have a leadership team, it's about talking to everybody and finding out what's going on. It gives me time to then go spend in my writer's room with my writers, to get my creative work done, because honestly, that's what Netflix is paying me for. And then to get all the creative work done, and then I can talk to the other creators of the other shows that we're doing and give them what they need, which sometimes is just mentorship, sometimes it's just listening to them rant

• 9:50Speaker 02

  about things, sometimes it's just telling them they're doing a good job, and deal with, you know, actors or networks or whatever needs to be done. And then it's about sort of coming together with everybody at the end of the day, figuring out what needs to be done. A lot of what I do is listening to the problem-solving that everybody else is doing for me. You know, my head of production will say, "I did this and it saved $20 million from this," or my head of content will say, "This was a nightmare, but it's already taken care of." We've all worked together for so long at this point. Everybody's a very well-oiled machine.

• 10:24Marc Andreessen?

  So let's say I'm a newly mentored graduate of, let's say, USC Film School, or a top-end program like that, and I want to come work for you and be part of this machine, I want to be number 41. What would I have to do to establish myself to the level that you would take a chance on me to be part of this?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  I like really interesting, hard-working people. For me, it's not about pedigree or any of that. It's about output. What have you done? What have you done that's creative? How pulled yourself up by your bootstraps have you been? We have a wonderful girl who works for us, who, she doesn't have a car, and so she has to Uber everywhere she goes, which is, you know, in L.A. is like a nightmare. And part of her job is like going to a million different places, I should say. But she is such a hard, amazing, working person, I was, you know, we hire her anyway, it doesn't matter. We're going to figure out how to make that work. And we did. So to me, it's about people who are passionate about what they do, who are going to sort of eat, sleep, and breathe it.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  I also like people who know how to have a life outside, because the more creative you can be on the outside, the more you bring to the inside.

• 11:27Marc Andreessen?

  And then, suppose I've been working for you for three, four, five, six years, and I poke my head up and I say, "Boy, I have an idea for a show I'd like to make, and I'd like to make it under your umbrella." What do I have to do to get to that level?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Well, that happens all the time. So, the show we're doing right now, called Bridgerton, which is being made by Chris Van Dusen, Chris was my assistant on Grey's Anatomy, he's making a show. Pete Nowak, who does How to Get with Murder, he was a baby writer on Private Practice, I think, and Grey's Anatomy at a certain point in time. That's how we roll.

• 11:59Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  I like to raise the people who are going to be our next group of writers, mainly because they already know how to do everything, but also because there's so many interesting people who come through who are the next great purveyors of ideas, who sometimes get overlooked.

• 12:13Marc Andreessen?

  Right. So one of the things that Hollywood and Silicon Valley has in common is, we both launch these projects, and some of them work and some of them don't.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:22Marc Andreessen?

  And even the best entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, and even the best creators in Hollywood, have projects. Some projects succeed, some projects don't. As you think about this kind of, if you're a production company, studio, umbrella that you're building, as you have all these projects, what's the success rate that you expect to have? And why?

• 12:38Speaker 02

  What's the success?

• 12:39Marc Andreessen?

  What's the right success rate?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  I'm very hard on myself.

• 12:43Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Like, I've never created a show that hasn't gone less than 100 episodes, you know? So I'm very hard on myself.

• 12:49Marc Andreessen?

  You've written treatments and screenplays for things that haven't gotten picked up?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Maybe one.

• 12:53Marc Andreessen?

  Okay, alright, okay, alright.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  But I've never produced anything that hasn't gotten, you know, that way.

• 12:57Marc Andreessen?

  You have a lot more projects underway now?

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have a lot more projects underway now, and some of them aren't supposed to go that long, so it's not that thing. But I have a real, like, panic about not doing well for me. But for shows that we're making, it's really about, a lot of it is about, like, helping somebody figure out how you run a show. Running a show is not an easy thing. It's, you go from being a writer who's writing at home in your pajamas to having 350 people working for you, looking at you and saying, "What do we do now?" So it's not a simple, like, way of being. So to me, it's about sort of helping them stand on their own two feet, because eventually they're going to have to, whether or not you're shoring them up or not, they really have to be able to do it for themselves. So for some people, that's easier than for others. For some people, it's like duck to water, for some people, it's really teaching them

• 13:44Speaker 02

  how to swim.

• 13:45Marc Andreessen?

  When do you know that a show's gonna work? What's the moment?

• 13:51Speaker 02

  You know, I don't, well, yes, I think you do. You know around episode 10.

• 13:57Marc Andreessen?

  Is that right? You still have to get that far into it before you feel certain?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. For the shows I make, for shows we make with other people, around episode 10, I become sure. Whether or not it's gonna survive, really, whether or not it has an engine that can keep going, whether or not I feel like I understand what the show is, because until then, you're still just finding it. You know, you've just started to work with all these people, you're all getting your feet wet, you're figuring out what this thing is, you know, you're making a product, and you've only been working together for, by that point, it's maybe six months, seven months.

• 14:31Marc Andreessen?

  Right. Yeah, you see these shows that they take, Parks and Rec was maybe a famous example of this, they kind of take a left turn.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:37Marc Andreessen?

  And then some of them take a left turn and get much, much better. Succession is a show, there are also people who talk about it that way. I haven't seen season two yet.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Oh, it's genius.

• 14:43Marc Andreessen?

  No spoilers, no spoilers. But I've heard it's, I loved season one, but I've heard it's even better in season two. And so it's a, it's a left turn to greatness? Is that the, is the result of the cohesion of the people? Is that the?

• 14:54Speaker 02

  It's, it's part of it's, you, you figure out what you have, you gel. Scandal, we, I feel like we were like, we don't quite know what we're doing season one. And then we got to the end of season one and we hit this episode where you sort of saw what happened in the past. And we all let, okay, now we understand our show completely.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Grey's was very different. I sort of knew from the beginning what was going on, but it wasn't until the ex-wife showed up. Like there were these moments when you sort of, when things gel and you know what the show is, and it starts to sing.

• 15:25Marc Andreessen?

  Right. Do you do test screenings for your shows?

• 15:28Speaker 02

  The network does test screenings, yes.

• 15:30Marc Andreessen?

  Do you, do you find value in test screenings or no?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  It's an interesting question. I find value in it, especially when like, for instance, when we were making Grey's and I was this kid who was making a show and they had no idea who I was and they were very worried about, you know, what is this show? There had never been a show where, you know, women were that competitive, where a woman had slept with a guy the night before her first day of work, where there were that many people of color in a show. They were very nervous. And so, you know, I'd been sort of keeping my head down and just doing my work and hoping for the best. Testing was great because testing then proved that the show was working for them. It proved what I felt, you know, was a good show, was a good show for them. So testing does help because it backs up, you know, the suits who need to know that

• 16:15Speaker 02

  this is going to work if they need numbers for themselves to show people.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  But it's never been a thing that I've really paid attention to in a real way in network television because testing in network television is really about opinion. I'm very excited about it at a place like Netflix because that, the data is very different than testing.

• 16:34Marc Andreessen?

  So that was my next question. So, so what, what kinds of data would you find useful in the creative process?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Well, right now I'm excited by the concept that I could be told, for instance, like exactly when a whole group of people decide they're going to stop watching something.

• 16:48Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Because that's very different than, you know, in network television, people will say like, I hate that character. And that's fine.

• 16:55Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  But that doesn't mean that they're going to start, stop watching. You know, people say they hate somebody and they love to hate them, they're going to keep watching, it doesn't matter. But it can be interpreted differently. But in data, when they say like, everybody stopped watching exactly at this moment.

• 17:08Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  That is real, and that helps us.

• 17:12Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  You know, if you really want to know it. And I haven't gotten to use it yet, but I'm excited by the idea of getting to.

• 17:17Marc Andreessen?

  We'll talk more about Netflix in a few minutes, but I'd love to talk a little bit more about the distinction between film and TV, because it feels like something very important is happening. So TV is like mass market entertainment. It may be not expected to be at the same creative bar, although there were obviously exceptions along the way. And then it feels like something may be flipped. Is what I think about is that television is the writer-driven medium, as you mentioned, where the writers are actually given control of the show. And of course, legendarily, in the film industry, that is not the case.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  It's directors, yes.

• 17:42Marc Andreessen?

  Right. And then there have been actually books written about how terrible it can be for the writers to see the results of their work through the sausage-making machine. And so would you agree with the thesis that there's been this inversion of quality from film to TV? Would you agree it's because it's writer-driven, or would you have a different point of view on that?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  I don't like to use the word quality, because I think that quality makes it about what's good and what's bad. I think that movies like Star Wars and Jaws and all these really awesome blockbuster movies changed the idea of what a movie could be. And the pursuit of a big blockbuster changed what people were interested in making. And over time, you know, for a while, it meant they could make blockbusters and they could make these amazing, you know, smaller, character-driven movies. And then over time, it began, they made more just big blockbuster action movies. Then they made more blockbuster action movies and just remakes. And at a certain point, that began to be what was lucrative for them, period.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Less prestige films and more just bigger movies. And, you know, I like a good Marvel movie, so I'm fine with it. But it did mean that a lot of that character-based stuff didn't get made. And at a certain point, I think a lot of writers realized that if they wanted to make those kinds of stories, and if they wanted to have control of them, you could make a lot of stuff on television. It literally was 2003 or '04 when I sat down and said, oh, all the good character-driven stuff can be made on television. So it is that time.

• 19:11Marc Andreessen?

  Right. And was it putting the writers in charge? Was that the...

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, television wasn't... In film, we always say the director fires the writer and in television, the writer fires the director, and that's always been the way it's been. So I think that it's just a writer-driven medium.

• 19:27Marc Andreessen?

  Right. It's amazing, because you think of in films, the director is so important.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:31Marc Andreessen?

  And yet, in TV shows, you see it's every episode is a different director.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  And the director is very important. It's simply that the writer has to continue. You're writing a, it's like writing a continuously long, crazy epic novel. So the writer is the person who's the through line.

• 19:45Marc Andreessen?

  Right. Okay, and then another analogy between Hollywood and the Valley that I think about a lot is, both of our worlds, there's a form of creative expression. There's creative expression in the form of creating the product and then creating the company, right, that makes the product. But then it's also a business. And I think one of the things that you've said is that everybody does need to eat.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:02Marc Andreessen?

  And so, it is important to also treat it as a business. Like, how do you navigate as a creative professional? How do you navigate that line between art and business?

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Well, part of what I think is that, you know, you have to really think about your audience. And I don't think that there's any shame in that. I enjoy writing for my audience, not necessarily to my audience, or, you know, like, thinking about my advertisers in that way. But I enjoy writing for the audience that I'm writing for. You know, there's a lot of entry points for the audience that we have, and they're awesome. You know, they're loyal, and they're wonderful, and they pay attention, and they care. And you have to respect that. And I don't think that there's any shame in that. Like, there's something about the idea that you can ignore your audience and think that you're still gonna get somewhere that is not very smart.

• 20:53Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  So I enjoy writing for the audience and really enjoy the stories that I'm telling. And I do think that if you're passionate about that, you can, you know, you can still be creative.

• 21:03Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah. Your shows are very adventurous. Many things happen in your shows, and the characters do many things. How do you know when you're pushing the audience too far? Is that possible?

• 21:12Speaker 02

  It definitely is possible. Usually, by the time I'm pushing them... Very far. They've been with us for so long that they're just like, oh, God, is she going there, you know? So it's sometimes it's OK.

• 21:27Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah. I mean, at one point on Scandal, two of the characters ended up basically being sociopathic serial killers in a love-struck relationship.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  It was, it's Washington.

• 21:37Marc Andreessen?

  And by the way, like, we watched every episode, so.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's Washington.

• 21:40Marc Andreessen?

  Well, it is.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  But, you know, a lot of bad things had happened to them, and it felt like the right place for them to go. But it was this very, you know, it was, it went with the idea that, like, DC was filled with monsters at the time.

• 21:50Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Not literal monsters, but it was this very dark world. And there's a lot of things that happened, and I feel like you're, you know, you're following story and following story and following story. Sometimes, sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

• 22:05Marc Andreessen?

  Right. So I remember watching, you know, watching Scandal start. Scandal started in 20, probably 12, 13.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, 2012.

• 22:14Marc Andreessen?

  So 2012. And I remember thinking, OK, boy, like, this is a crazy version of Washington DC.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:19Marc Andreessen?

  And I am so glad that, like, Normal Washington DC isn't crazy like this. And then I watched season two and season three, and then I started paying attention to Normal Washington DC. And I was like, oh, my goodness, things are getting crazy in real life. And so then it was like, given, you know, given whatever, given a Thursday night, do I watch Scandal or do I watch the news? Is it a challenge for somebody writing a show like that?

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Well, what happened for us is first, we wrote about this made-up thing that we made up called Thorn Gate, where if you, there was a spy thing that could, like, use your phone to spy on you, and it could listen into your...

• 22:52Marc Andreessen?

  That's absurd. I mean, that's just paranoid.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And it could, you know, listen to your conversations. And we thought we were just being, like, wild. And then two months later, it was happening. And like, that kept happening to us mainly because we were sort of reading the papers and sort of extrapolating, like, what-ifs. Then, and we thought that was fun. And the, you know, the critics thought it was fun, and we thought, like, isn't this cute? But then we made up, like, the wild and crazy, like, southern, like, billionaire who wanted to run for president and, and seemed to be like, just... Somebody and then it was happening and that was not as funny because it was like

• 23:34Speaker 02

  too real and it kept being very real and then at a certain point we thought we can't surpass what's happening in in Washington like there was a moment when I just thought I don't even know how to surpass what's happening in Washington we did our inauguration and it just felt like what's happening in real life is just way crazier and I thought like I'm done which is why we ended in season seven I thought I cannot write anymore about what's happening we'd have to go the other way we'd have to go like way serious in order to make it that interesting.

• 24:06Marc Andreessen?

  For a long time I used to ask my friends in DC is real is Washington more like Scandal or Veep?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:11Marc Andreessen?

  And for a long time the answer was Veep.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  I know.

• 24:13Marc Andreessen?

  Yes.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  I know and I was very proud of that.

• 24:15Marc Andreessen?

  Yes, so we'll finish up by talking about tech and talking about what you're not doing with Netflix. First I'd love to ask has social media kind of arrived kind of mid these shows for you and kind of mid your career has social media changed how you do what you do?

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Um, Scandal really helped change how people use TV shows to do what they do like we we were part of the start of you know live tweeting shows that was one of the things that we all did at the very beginning and the live tweeting of shows was really a big deal and how we interacted with fans so it's changed the way we interacted with fans it didn't change the way we wrote the shows or create the shows but it was a very quick means of communicating with critics talking to the press and hearing what the fans had to say.

• 24:58Marc Andreessen?

  I've heard a theory that in the from friends of mine in the movie business that the social media has made movies much harder because you used to be able to release a movie on Friday and if the movie wasn't that great people would still see it for three, four or five days you could have that first opening weekend you could maybe still make a profit on that movie today movie comes out you know it shows up in theaters five o'clock by six o'clock or seven o'clock on Friday night the buzz is out.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:22Marc Andreessen?

  Buzz is not good the movie just dies and so one of the arguments I've heard is that that's one of the things that's reduced risk taking in the film business.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 25:28Marc Andreessen?

  Do you buy that?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  It's highly possible. I mean, one of the things that was great for us was because the live tweeting was so important and because it meant that if you missed it, you missed the conversation, we sort of brought back watching a show in real time. So it worked great for network television for that moment. But I do think for things like movies, it's dangerous.

• 25:50Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Because it people, well, also spoilers, I've seen things where people like completely tell the ends of movies on Twitter and things like that.

• 25:57Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Streaming, I think it's a good thing for an audience as well because it does get the word out.

• 26:01Marc Andreessen?

  Right. Well, as I said, we'll talk about Netflix. But when you make your shows for Netflix now, will they be released weekly the way you have been? Or will you do the binge battle?

• 26:09Speaker 02

  I hope, I really am big on binge watching myself. So I'm hoping they're all released binge in a binge way.

• 26:15Marc Andreessen?

  So then, one of the things you hear about, one of the questions about, I mean, binging as a consumer proposition is amazing, and I think we all love it. One of the things you do hear is it does reduce that water cooler effect, that kind of simultaneous experience. And you do get these shows, you know, like, what's the, you do get, you know, obviously, Game of Thrones has been a recent example of this, where it's just like, where it feels like, at least for a brief moment in time, the whole country is watching the same thing again. Is that, do you think that that's something that should be preserved? Or is that just, is that not necessary?

• 26:43Speaker 02

  I'm not that worried about it. I mean, and I think I'm not that worried about it because I still, you know, I'm in the grocery store and I still turn around a corner and there's a 12-year-old staring at me. And suddenly, I'm Jesus. And I realize, oh, you've just watched 300 episodes of Grey's Anatomy, like, at once. So I think that binging, no matter what, still works.

• 27:03Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  And I don't think you have to have your water cooler moments all at once.

• 27:06Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  I think that there's something interesting about telling somebody, like, oh, my God, have you seen, you know, Dark, which is my favorite show. Have you seen Dark? And you have to watch it, and you go crazy on it, and then somebody else watches it, and it's sort of like you're passing on, like, a secret.

• 27:19Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah, almost like a novel.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:21Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah.

• 27:23Marc Andreessen?

  Great, okay, let's talk about Netflix. So you've made this huge announcement recently, you're moving to Netflix and you have this big new deal relationship with Netflix. I was going to ask you, will the shows you make for Netflix be different than the shows you make for ABC? But you have said, I believe, that the shows that you've made for ABC are shows made for ABC, whereas shows made for Netflix will be shows made for the world?

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's a difference. ABC has a very specific audience of people who watch shows on ABC. They have a brand themselves, and there's a group of people they are making shows for. They have advertisers who they need to keep happy, and there's a system. And I think that that's great. I mean, that's what's been working. So Netflix's thing is very different. Like, the idea for Netflix is, my job is to make shows that make people want to subscribe to Netflix, which is very different than keeping people watching, you know what I mean? It's just different, bringing people to a show for a specific hour of time. So it means we can make almost anything, as long as it's good.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  And so for us, it's been really fun to expand the content of what we're making while still keeping what I think, you know, are the same core audience members in our minds.

• 28:34Marc Andreessen?

  Right. What does Netflix, I mean, in general terms, not necessarily in specifics, but in general terms, what does Netflix ask from you when you want to make a show as part of your new partnership?

• 28:43Speaker 02

  I can tell you exactly, in specific terms, what they ask from us, which is, make whatever makes you happy, which has been fantastic. I mean, that's an extraordinary deal to have, to get to work with people who are like, just make stuff that's good. And they've been very supportive about that.

• 29:00Marc Andreessen?

  Do they try, do they connect that back to like, projections on subscriber numbers or retention, or does that come later? Or is that just not part of the conversation?

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, there's no, we don't have to ask those questions. Like, that's not a thing that happens. It's more about, are you excited about this? That's great, go. We go to them and we say, we're gonna make, you know, eight episodes of this, or 10 episodes of this, or we're excited about this. And they've been very supportive.

• 29:21Marc Andreessen?

  Right.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  That might change if we start to make things that are terrible. But right now, they're very, very supportive of us making, you know, our shows.

• 29:26Marc Andreessen?

  Right. And is the right format, one of the, sort of... The formats of entertainment kind of change with technology. And so there's sort of arguments about why TV shows are half hour and an hour. It has to do with the distribution of commercials, commercial placement, has to do with the viewing patterns and how long people will sit and so forth. Is like the 45 minute, one hour drama and the half hour comedy, is that the stable state even in a streaming world? Or do you think the sort of shape of programs will change?

• 29:52Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting. I think it was Amazon that made the 30 minute show Homecoming, which was, there was a drama, but it was 30 minutes. And it was really interesting and people stayed riveted. They've made a couple of things that have been like 15 minute comedies, which are surprising. I don't know about the length. I know that for me, writing something that's about 60 pages long, which is about 45 minutes long on television feels right. It's what I know how to do. And it feels good to me. I have not reached a point now where I'm thinking like I need to write something that's an hour and 15 minutes, or that I need to write something that's only 20 minutes long. That's not my thing.

• 30:28Marc Andreessen?

  I've also read, I've also read, I've seen studies over the years. There's a great Stephen Johnson, the author, wrote a book called Everything is Bad is Good for You, where among other things, he makes a very positive case for television. One of the things he shows in that book is that television shows have gotten much more complex over time. And so if you chart the plot of a drama from the 1970s and compare it to The Sopranos or to Grey's Anatomy, like it's just like a wildly different level of complexity. And therefore kind of stimulation. I've heard an argument that streaming will lead to a dramatic, even increase in complexity and sophistication as a consequence of the fact, no commercial breaks, right? So no need for the cliffhanger and then just pick the narrative back up. And then also no need to have the recap of the next episode, because you, I guess you assume the bingeing model. Does this, does this open the door to a much more sophisticated form of entertainment?

• 31:12Speaker 02

  I think it can. I mean, and I think what's very interesting for somebody coming from so many years of writing network television, it's been, it's been fun to really play with that, to know like we don't have to recap, we don't have to have act breaks, we don't have to worry about like how to get somebody from that episode to this episode. You know, there's a lot of things that go away when you don't have to do that. And it does feel like stories can get more complex because you don't have to worry about driving the things forward in that way. But I also am, like, I like a good plot. Like, I like when things are moving forward. I enjoy the pace of something like Scandal. Writing it is fun. And so to me, I, you know, a lot of streaming shows get really slow because they know they

• 31:56Speaker 02

  can, because they know you're streaming them. I don't think that's for me in terms of the way I write things. I enjoy watching them, but I don't think it's for me. So we're still moving at a pace.

• 32:07Marc Andreessen?

  And then on your, I saw in an interview you did about your Netflix deal, your company Shondaland is moving to a new facility. And there's a vignette, one of the stories that has you and your partners looking at photos on the wall of the founders of United Artists.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:19Marc Andreessen?

  Which is a studio from classic Hollywood, from Golden Age, Golden Age Hollywood.

• 32:25Marc Andreessen?

  Maybe, and you talked about, I think, a little bit, or alluded, maybe that's a little bit of inspiration for where you're headed with Shondaland, or maybe there's some historical legacy there to?

• 32:33Speaker 02

  We've really created, we were able to create a model in the beginning when we first got there to find a way to hold on to a series of our writers and to make it sort of a creative home for people to stay versus, you know, you have to go away and take a deal here and come back there and get hired for this show and come back. I was like, can't we have more of an incubator for writers? And Netflix was very excited about that idea and amenable to that idea. And I felt like that, felt like, you know, a home of a bunch of creative people, like all running in and out of their offices and screaming about how things aren't working and helping each other. Felt good.

• 33:10Marc Andreessen?

  So United Artists, the history, for those who don't, the history of United Artists was it was a studio founded by some of the legendary creative talent at that time.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:17Marc Andreessen?

  Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, a series of these people. And it ran for quite a while with the kind of model that you're describing. But then at a certain point that ended and the sort of modern studio, you know, world that we know of kind of dominated for the last 50 years. Like, did that have to end? Or why would now be the right time for that to come back?

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Because we can, and we're enjoying ourselves and we can do it. And also, it feels like a really good creative time. Everything feels new. You know, we're on this new horizon of where we can go in terms of this industry. You know, something is sort of going down and something is coming up, and that means, I don't know, just a new space for us.

• 33:54Marc Andreessen?

  That's great. Maybe we could close on three recommendations from you for TV shows, films, or books that aren't made by you.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, plenty of those.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  I highly recommend Dark.

• 34:07Marc Andreessen?

  Dark.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Which is a German show on Netflix.

• 34:09Marc Andreessen?

  On Netflix.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  And it's so good.

• 34:11Marc Andreessen?

  Now, do I watch that with dubs? Or do I watch that with subtitles?

• 34:14Speaker 02

  It depends on if you're a dub or subtitle person.

• 34:16Marc Andreessen?

  Okay.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Dark is one of those shows where they're speaking German, but the actors who do the German also do their own dubs.

• 34:21Marc Andreessen?

  Okay.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  So it's actually really good. And the fact that I know that means I'm a super nerd.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Succession, which you have not seen, but you obviously need to see because it's genius.

• 34:34Marc Andreessen?

  Succession, that show's nonfiction, right?

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's another one of those shows.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  And probably Barry, which is really fantastic.

• 34:44Marc Andreessen?

  A comedy on HBO.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a comedy on HBO. It's really beautiful.

• 34:46Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah, what makes Barry special?

• 34:48Speaker 02

  I think just the way it was written and the way it's performed. That show feels like nothing else on television right now.

• 34:53Marc Andreessen?

  Is that right? That's great.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:54Marc Andreessen?

  Shonda Rhimes, thank you.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Thank you.