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Shonda Rhimes used to feel a disconnect between her and her characters

VPM | By Rachel Martin, Taylor Hutchison and Mallory Yu

Published October 29, 2025 at 8:16 PM EDT

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Every week, a guest draws a card from NPR’s Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Shonda Rhimes has created some of the most successful TV shows of the 21st century, including “Scandal” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” But she says there was always a disconnect between her and her characters.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

SHONDA RHIMES: My characters had really big, glorious lives. And I was doing nothing except for writing those lives. So I was very shy, incredibly introverted. Like, I don’t think I was going to – I was doing nothing.

DETROW: Her memoir, “Year Of Yes,” is about her attempt to embrace new experiences. A 10th anniversary edition is out now. She talked to Wild Card host Rachel Martin.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

RACHEL MARTIN: How much do you rely on the validation of others?

RHIMES: I don’t, I don’t. I mean, it’s never been important to me what other people think.

MARTIN: Really?

RHIMES: Yeah. I mean, I say never, but to degrees. And I think I reached a place in the last five years – maybe it’s turning 50 or something – that made me just go like, I really don’t care. Life’s too short. I can’t waste my time and energy caring about other people’s validation.

MARTIN: Yeah.

RHIMES: Because then when they…

MARTIN: Even professionally? With the stuff you make, you need people to like it. It’s like this fine line.

RHIMES: I do need people to like it. But I don’t do my job so that people will like it. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t write the shows thinking people are going to like this. It is a wonderful by-product, a wonderful by-product of my shows. But I can’t live like that. And also, when you believe the good things people say about you, you also then are obligated to believe the bad things.

MARTIN: Oh, that is a powerful idea, isn’t it?

RHIMES: Yeah. And to me, that’s not a way to be creative, pursue creativity. It’s not a way to do business. The goal is to make a great show that I’m proud of.

MARTIN: How’d you come out that way? Was it your family, your parents?

RHIMES: I was raised by very amazing parents…

MARTIN: Yeah.

RHIMES: …Who really – you know, my father was a guy who was always saying the only limit to your success is your own imagination. And my mother was a woman who I used to say, like, she was my secret advance man.

MARTIN: (Laughter).

RHIMES: You know, moving through the world knocking obstacles out of my path that I didn’t even know existed. You know, she was…

MARTIN: Yeah.

RHIMES: You know, like, any racism in the ’70s, I did not – I was not totally aware of it because my mother had already taken care of it ahead of time. People like the woman who said I shouldn’t be going to Dartmouth, my guidance counselor, you know, that you’re not Ivy League material.

MARTIN: Oh, right, when you were applying to college.

RHIMES: Yeah.

MARTIN: You are not Ivy League material.

RHIMES: And my mom, like, came in and took care of that and was like, apply anywhere you want to. So there’s a lot of that. And a lot of that really had to do with us understanding our worth and my parents making sure that we understood our worth in the world.

MARTIN: And it shapes your parenting, no doubt.

RHIMES: It does, it does. I want my girls to know that they’re powerful people.

MARTIN: Yeah.

RHIMES: And, you know, I want them to be great people. I don’t want them to be, you know, cruel or mean. I want them to be kind. But I also don’t want them to be stepped on.

MARTIN: Yeah. I know this, too. I have a…

RHIMES: Yeah.

MARTIN: …11-year-old and a 13-year-old. Boys. But…

RHIMES: Oh, I have an 11- and 13-year-old girls.

MARTIN: Oh, yeah.

RHIMES: Yeah.

MARTIN: So we’re right in it.

RHIMES: Yeah.

MARTIN: And that age in particular, it’s a hard thing to teach a kid that age that you are enough. And if people can’t see it right now, then tell them to go pound sand and live your life.

RHIMES: My daughter, Beckett, calls it fitting out.

MARTIN: Ah.

RHIMES: She’s always like, I’m fitting out. As she’s gotten older, fitting out has become a thing that is very comfortable for her. Yeah.

MARTIN: I love it.

DETROW: You can watch a longer conversation with Shonda Rhimes by searching for @nprwildcard on YouTube. The 10th anniversary of her memoir, “Year Of Yes,” is out now.

(SOUNDBITE OF GOAPELE SONG “CLOSER”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Rachel Martin

Rachel Martin is a founding host of NPR's award-winning morning news podcast Up First. Martin's interviews take listeners behind the headlines to understand the people at the center of those stories.

She spent six years as a host of Morning Edition, and was previously the host of Weekend Edition Sunday for four years, where she launched the "For the Record" series.

Martin also served as National Security Correspondent for NPR, where she covered both defense and intelligence issues. She traveled regularly to Iraq and Afghanistan with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his successor Leon Panetta, reporting on the U.S. wars and the effectiveness of the Pentagon's counterinsurgency strategy. Martin also reported extensively on the changing demographic of the U.S. military – from the debate over whether to allow women to fight in combat units, to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Her reporting on how the military is changing also took her to a U.S. Air Force base in New Mexico for a rare look at how the military trains drone pilots.

Martin also worked as a NPR foreign correspondent based in Berlin from 2005-2006. During her time in Europe, she covered the London terrorist attacks, the election of Angela Merkel as Chancellor to Germany, the 2006 World Cup and issues surrounding immigration and shifting cultural identities in Europe.

Her foreign reporting experience extends beyond Europe. Martin has also worked extensively in Afghanistan. She began reporting from there as a freelancer during the summer of 2003, covering the reconstruction effort in the wake of the U.S. invasion. In fall 2004, Martin returned for several months to cover Afghanistan's first democratic presidential election. She has reported widely on human rights issues in Afghanistan, the fledgling political and governance system and the U.S.-NATO fight against the insurgency. She also reported from Iraq, where she covered U.S. military operations and the strategic alliance between Sunni sheiks and the U.S. military in Anbar province. She traveled to Saudi Arabi in 2015 to report on women's rights and in 2022 she reported from Ukraine's border with Belarus in the leadup to the Russian war.

Martin was part of the team that launched NPR's experimental morning news show, The Bryant Park Project, based in New York — a live two-hour daily multimedia program that she co-hosted with Alison Stewart and Mike Pesca.

In 2006-2007, Martin served as NPR's religion correspondent. Her piece on Islam in America was awarded "Best Radio Feature" by the Religion News Writers Association in 2007. As one of NPR's reporters assigned to cover the Virginia Tech massacre that same year, she was on the school's campus within hours of the shooting and on the ground in Blacksburg, Va., covering the investigation and emotional aftermath in the following days. In 2011, her story on racial discrimination in Hollywood won a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and her series on the effects of the opioid epidemic on children won a Gracie award in 2019.

Martin started her career at public radio station KQED in San Francisco as a producer and reporter.

She holds an undergraduate degree in political science and an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. Martin also holds a Master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University.

She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.

See stories by Rachel Martin