Shonda Rhimes has mastered the art of the spinoff (and the prequel … and the crossover). But that doesn’t mean that every spinoff idea the Shondaland founder has had made its way to air.
Rhimes’ first series, Grey’s Anatomy, has successfully launched two spinoffs in its time with 2007’s Private Practice and 2018’s Station 19, but in looking back at 20 years of Shondaland, Rhimes told Entertainment Weekly that there have been a few other ideas along the way.
“On Grey’s, there were a bunch,” Rhimes says when asked about spinoff ideas that didn’t happen. “I felt like we could have done Chicago Anatomy, Boston. We could have done that. It just didn’t appeal to me to rebuild the same world. And then we thought about a lot of things.”
Patrick Dempsey, Ellen Pompeo, and Caterina Scorsone on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.
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One of those things involved the Shepherd family. “I thought that there could be a spinoff with Amelia [Caterina Scorsone] that was the Shepherd sisters,” she says. “They’re all doctors. It could have been a Shepherd sisters show, which would’ve been very interesting.”
Amelia, of course, is the most prominent of Derek’s (Patrick Dempsey) sisters on Grey’s, but the series has also introduced Nancy (Embeth Davidtz), Kathleen (Amy Acker), and Liz (Neve Campbell), though fans have yet to see all of them together — hence the spinoff idea. (And let’s not forget that the great Tyne Daly plays matriarch Carolyn Shepherd.)
Caterina Scorsone on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.
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Another spinoff that never came to be takes us to Scandal. “We wanted to do a B613 spinoff on Scandal,” Rhimes says, which was a topic of discussion when the show was still airing on ABC. The covert government agency, initially run by Rowan Pope (Joe Morton) certainly would’ve been able to provide its fair share of drama, though it did end up becoming a central part of the flagship series.
“There was a bunch,” Rhimes says of spinoff discussions. “But we really tried to look for shows that could stand on their own two feet, that were their own thing. If you spin off a character, what people want is more of the same. They’re like, ‘Oh, I’m going to get another show where Addison’s [Kate Walsh] the mistress.’ Instinctively you want more of the same because that really worked. And to build a new world is incredibly difficult.”
That’s why, for something like Bridgerton, Rhimes says they chose to do Queen Charlotte as a prequel instead of a traditional spinoff. “I love that because it is of the world, but it’s not the world,” Rhimes says. “I could tell the stories I wanted to tell and find great joy in that.”
But for the record, we would still watch a show about the Shepherd sisters.
