Would you have watched a show about the Shepherd sisters?
Shonda Rhimeshas 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.
Patrick Dempsey, Ellen Pompeo, and Caterina Scorsone on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.Richard Cartwright/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
“I felt like we could have doneChicago Anatomy,Boston.
We could have done that.
It just didn’t appeal to me to rebuild the same world.
Caterina Scorsone on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.Richard Cartwright/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
And then we thought about a lot of things.”
Richard Cartwright/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
One of those things involved the Shepherd family.
“They’re all doctors.
Joe Morton on ‘Scandal’.Richard Cartwright/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
It could have been a Shepherd sisters show, which would’ve been very interesting.”
(And let’s not forget that the great Tyne Daly plays matriarch Carolyn Shepherd.)
Another spinoff that never came to be takes us toScandal.
“There was a bunch,” Rhimes says of spinoff discussions.
If you spin off a character, what people want is more of the same.
Instinctively you want more of the same because that really worked.
And to build a new world is incredibly difficult."
“I could tell the stories I wanted to tell and find great joy in that.”
But for the record, wewouldstill watch a show about the Shepherd sisters.
