Meet Shonda Rhimes, the millionaire showrunner behind Netflix’s hit new series Bridgerton – and ABC’s Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy and How to Get Away with Murder
First Shonda Rhimes wrote the screenplays for Britney Spears’ Crossroads and The Princess Diaries sequel, then Shondaland’s Thursday night prime-time TV shows started the #TGIT hashtag for ‘thank God it’s Thursday’ – and made its founder a millionaire
At age 50, Shonda Rhimes has already created a legacy.
The success of her production company Shondaland’s show Grey’s Anatomy on ABC made Rhimes the first black woman to run a successful prime time drama on a broadcast network. But that was only the beginning. Her following hit shows Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder brought Rhimes into the cultural lexicon with #TGIT (“thank God it’s Thursday”), dubbed as such because of how Rhimes’ shows dominated TV’s Thursday night prime time line-up.
In 2017, she ended her contract early with ABC, trading in her US$10 million base salary for a four-year deal with Netflix worth an estimated US$150 million. Three years later, her first Netflix show Bridgerton debuted on Christmas to much hype.
It’s all made Rhimes one of the highest-paid showrunners in TV, with Forbes estimating her net worth at US$135 million.
From buying the Grey’s Anatomy cast holidays to snapping up properties around Los Angeles, here’s how Rhimes spends her millions.
When I was a struggling graduate student in film school, I often had no money – so I often had to choose between wine and things like toilet paper. Steak did not even enter into the equation
How did she make her fortune?
Rhimes didn’t always see herself working in TV. As a kid, she dreamt of being a novelist. That all changed after she saw Whoopi Goldberg on Broadway.
She earned her MFA in film at the University of Southern California, where she discovered a “new way of storytelling,” she said, and worked as an assistant on several film projects.
Her TV career launched in 2003 when ABC picked up Grey’s Anatomy, which garnered 20 million viewers by the end of its first season. It made Rhimes the first black woman showrunner of a successful prime time drama on a broadcast network.
