Grey’s Anatomy’ creator Shonda Rhimes talks about her ‘psychotic’ love for ‘Doctor Who’
How much does Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice creator Shonda Rhimes love the British sci-fi show Doctor Who? “I feel the two highlights of my past five years are I got to meet (former Who executive producer) Russell Davies and I got to meet the star of (Who spin-off show) Torchwood, John Barrowman, who was in one of our pilots,” reveals the prolific TV showrunner. Indeed, an episode from the most recent season of Grey’s Anatomy featured a Who fan who lost his ear at a fan convention while rushing to get a model TARDIS signed by Davies.
Rhimes talked about her love for the show in last week’s Entertainment Weekly Doctor Who cover story (see above). But she had much, much more to say about the 49-year-old TV institution — whose new season debuts on BBC America later this summer — as you can read below…
This made me grin so hard, and then the first two questions…
I just wish people wouldn’t SAY things like ‘we were talking about the things that we could never do in an episode that was geared towards the women and one was a comic convention’, or ‘Some of our guy viewers were like, “This is great, this is exciting.” And then there were some of our girl viewers who had just never seen Doctor Who and were like, “I don’t get it.”’.
The thing is I don’t care if it’s true. I expect it is. I think it doesn’t matter. I think you shouldn’t SAY it. Especially when you’re SHONDA EFFING RHIMES, patron saint of great three-dimensional female TV characters.
I just came for an article about a brilliant female writer of colour loving a brilliant geek show I also love, so the internalised industry sexism right up front was a bit of a shock.
I’m probably being a bit harsh. She doesn’t fall into the trap of agreeing with Moffat about the ‘more emotional’ thing. Basically it reminded me of a lot of publishing conversations I’ve had recently and made me a little bit sadface. The rest of the interview is just as awesome as I was expecting. :)
