#i felt like shonda rhimes writing this

[jbaileyfansite]

The Wall Street Journal Interview (2024)

The 36-year-old English actor Jonathan Bailey is one of Hollywood’s newest heartthrobs. From Shonda Rhimes's Regency-era courtship dramas of “Bridgerton” to the decades-long romantic-political saga of “Fellow Travelers” to the Met Gala red carpet, he has earned admirers with his goofy charm and deep looks of longing.“

Being acknowledged as a heartthrob is incredibly flattering,” Bailey said. “It’s a big compliment, not just to you as an actor but everything around you.”

It has been a life-changing few years for Bailey, a stage actor turned screen darling. After “Bridgerton” launched him to global fame, he wrote up a document with tips to help prepare his younger castmates for the attention their on-screen romances would earn. “I think it’s about how to approach the work in a way that allows you to feel yourself and grounded,” he said.

Bailey, who’s been acting since he was a child in the Royal Shakespeare Company, reprises the role of Anthony in the third season of “Bridgerton” this month. Later this year, he’ll appear as Fiyero in the film adaptation of “Wicked” with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. He lives outside of London. Here, he talks about his favorite tea, doing gymnastics and the advice he got from Sir Ian McKellen.

What time do you get up on Mondays, and what’s the first thing you do after waking up?

I try to get up between 7 and 8. Then I try to not look at my phone, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. If it’s a good day, I drink loads of water, have a bath and then just get out because I need to get outside. I’ll go for a walk, always with my headphones. If I feel a bit excited or my brain’s sort of alive, I’ll listen to a podcast because that keeps me quite calm. If not, I’ll listen to some drums and bass. 

How do you like your coffee? 

I love tea. Earl Grey tea for me. I love coffee as well.

What do you do for exercise?

I’m currently training for a half marathon. Then I do gymnastics at a local gym with loads of lovely, brilliant people. I’m part of that community, which I’m very proud of. I do handstands.

How long can you hold a handstand for?

I’ve gotten up to a minute. 

Do you meditate or journal or otherwise practice mindfulness?

Walking outside is meditation to me. There was a Buddhist center I loved when I was living in London, and I’d go there regularly to learn the practice of meditation. I believe in taking bits and bobs that work for you. I do write stuff down in a book that I carry with me, lessen the load in the brain when I can. 

Do you have any hobbies or habits that might surprise your fans? 

Probably playing loud music and dancing around naked. 

“Fellow Travelers” follows your character, Tim, as he falls for Matt Bomer’s Hawk over the course of several decades, from 1950s McCarthyism to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. How did you get into character? 

With Tim, I felt like there was so much understanding that was in my bones already just from being me. Understanding the character who you’re playing opposite is also really good. Me and Matt, we didn’t really talk about it but we had that understanding of the experience of what these queer, gay people were experiencing.

Beyond that, I think about my forefathers and what an incredible opportunity it was to an academic, hands-on research of gay life in America. As a Brit, there was so much to learn, so the preparation was kind of nerdy in that respect. In another, it was incredibly emotional and spiritual. 

You’ve become very famous for the looks of longing that you’ve perfected. Do you practice them in the mirror?

No, unfortunately, I probably practiced them in real life all the way through my childhood. It’s funny, isn’t it? I can totally understand why people say that, but I think maybe what fascinates me most about humans is there’s always a distance between what you want and what you have and who you are and who you want to be. I mean, if I’m still longing and 92 years old, then I’m going to be very happy. 

How did you prepare to model swimwear for Orlebar Brown? Was there any part of you that was nervous? 

I had been doing gymnastics, so the swimsuit-model aspect of it required a couple of weeks of doing more handstandy stuff. But no, I was excited. 

There were some cute photos of you and Ariana Grande released from the set of “Wicked.” Do you have any favorite memories from filming? 

I went to CinemaCon and it was the launch of all of us together. I watched the trailer for the first time, I’m so glad I waited to see it in the big cinema. I just watched Cynthia [Erivo] and I was, like, God, Cynthia’s just going to blow everyone’s mind. You care so much about her in it. And Ari redefines Glinda in a really fun way, it just expands. 

There’s so much love for the original material. It was really fun and silly and great. Jon M. Chu [the director] just mines the emotion and is quite sincere about the truth of what’s going on with the characters.

What’s your most prized possession?

My headphones. If I lose them, I feel crazy. But also in 2017—I saved up and it felt incredibly frivolous—I started collecting the Yves Saint Laurent love prints, the original prints of the years that my sisters were born because there are four of us. Annoying actually, one of my sisters was born in 1982, and I don’t think there is a print for that year, so I might have to do a stickman or something. 

What’s one piece of advice you’ve gotten that’s guided you? 

Always do theater. That was actually from Ian McKellen. It’s in my bones anyway.

Source

[jazy3]

I Finally Watched Bridgerton!

I just finished watching all two seasons of Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte! I get it now! I get why everyone is so obsessed with this show! I loved Daphne and Simon right away, but it took me a while to warm to Anthony and Kate especially since Anthony was such a jerk in Season One! But once I warmed to them, I was hooked! I’m glad that Simon and Daphne got their happy ending! I liked Eloise in Season One, but I hated her in Season Two! She was so awful to Pen and was so selfish. Colin is an idiot for not realizing how great Pen is! I’m interested to see what happens with Benedict as I feel like he’s either gay or bisexual and all of his relationships seem to be fleeting. 

I loved learning more about Queen Charlotte and her backstory but gosh was it heartbreaking! George tried so hard to get better so that they could be happy together and he was taken advantage of by horrible awful people who just wanted to torture and control him. Charlotte often comes off as cold, so it was interesting to see what lay beneath that, why she carries herself that way, and why she feels the need to guard herself. I love seeing more about her relationship with Brimsley and his relationship with Reynolds! Learning more about Edmund’s death was so sad and seeing Violet mourn him in both Season Two and Queen Charlotte was heartbreaking. 

I also felt for Lady Danbury and what she went through. It was heartbreaking to see her relationship with Violet’s father knowing that they both loved each other but couldn’t be together. I’ll be interested to see if they address that directly in Season Three. I thought the way they handled the desegregation of the Ton in Queen Charlotte was really well done. Handling sensitive topics like racism in a meaningful way that’s not heavy handed or over the top is something that Shonda Rhimes does particularly well. It’s why I think her shows are so success. Well that and the great writing. I’m super excited for Season Three! Can’t wait!

[ausetkmt]

I first saw Bamboozled as a 15-year-old, in April 2001, at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, south-west London, and it threw me for a loop. Written and directed by Spike Lee, the film is an intense satire about a frustrated African American TV executive, Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans), who creates a contemporary version of a minstrel show in order to purposefully get himself fired, and expose the commissioning network as a racist and retrograde outfit. However, the show, which features its black stars wearing blackface, becomes a huge hit, prompting Delacroix’s mental collapse, and an explosion of catastrophic violence, the effects of which are felt far and wide.

In a fraught contemporary climate where the mediation of the black image in American society is at a crucial juncture, Bamboozled’s trenchant commentary on the importance, complexity and lasting effects of media representation could hardly feel more urgent. Each time an unarmed black person is killed, then hurriedly repositioned in death as a thug, a brute, or a layabout by mainstream media outlets – as has happened recently to Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Samuel DuBose and countless others – we are seeing the perpetuation of old anti-black stereotypes, forged in the crucible of mass American art, reconfigured for our time.

Lee’s film traces a grim continuum between stereotypes old and new, connected by knotty skeins of institutional racism. Many critics at the time of the film’s release suggested that Lee had needlessly reopened old wounds; that the dark days of minstrelsy were comfortably behind us, and that we should move on. Yet Lee’s vision was not only necessary, it proved remarkably prescient. During the course of writing this book, I rewatched episodes of garish reality TV shows like Flavor of Love (2006-8), starring the clock-wearing rapper-cum-jester Flavor Flav, and The Real Housewives of Atlanta (2008-). I had to concede that Bamboozled’s nightmarish New Millennium Minstrel Show didn’t look so far-fetched after all. I sat gape-mouthed in front of Lee Daniels and Danny Strong’s musical soap opera Empire (2014-) – a wildly entertaining but exceedingly dubious carnival of black pathologies – and couldn’t help but wonder if it was the type of show that would get Bamboozled’s master-wigger network boss Dunwitty (Michael Rapaport) hot under the collar at proposal stage.

When, in October 2014, I saw footage of freshly signed rapper Bobby Shmurda literally dancing on a table in front of a group of executives, exactly like performer Manray (Savion Glover) does in Bamboozled, I began to wonder whether Lee was in fact a secret soothsayer. Not even he, however, could have predicted the transcendentally weird tale of Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP leader in Spokane, Washington, who was revealed to have been white, and posing as African American all along. At the time of the incident, many wags on social media suggested that Lee would be the ideal man to direct Bamboozled 2: The Rachel Dolezal Story.

Bamboozled’s shrewd commentary on the lack of behind-the-scenes diversity in mainstream entertainment is also especially relevant today. The presence of figures like Robin Thede – head writer on The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, and the first black woman to hold that position on a late-night network comedy show – and Shonda Rhimes, the powerful showrunner behind Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder, is heartening. Yet a report released in March 2015 by the Writer’s Guild of America West revealed that minority writers accounted for just 13.7% of employment: a dismal statistic. Moreover, Rhimes’s success didn’t insulate her from being disrespectfully branded as an “Angry Black Woman” – that most pernicious of stereotypes – in a rancid, supposedly flattering article by Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times

While most of us can cheer the incrementally increasing diversity on our film and television screens, Bamboozled forces us to question the quality and progressiveness of these roles. Ostensibly it’s great that talented actors such as Mo’Nique (Precious, 2009), Octavia Spencer (The Help, 2011) and Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave, 2013) are winning Oscars, but isn’t the shine taken off somewhat by the fact they were rewarded by the establishment for playing, respectively, a psychotic “welfare queen”, a neo-Mammy in a white savior period picture, and a chronically abused slave? Why don’t black women win Oscars for playing complex heroines or crotchety geniuses like their white male counterparts? Because old stereotypes die hard within an industry that prefers stasis over change. Perhaps even more disturbingly, there’s something inherently soothing about such stereotypes for mass audiences – a point particularly relevant to the wild popularity of Bamboozled’s own minstrel show.

And how far have we come, really? Ridley Scott cast a host of white actors (including a fake tan-enhanced Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton) in his Middle Eastern epic/flop Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), but his response to complaints was both flippant, and distressingly matter-of-fact: “I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn’t even come up.” The best riposte to Scott and his film came from independent black film-maker Terence Nance, who wrote that “[l]ike The Birth of a Nation before it, [Exodus] traffics in absurd cultural appropriation and brown-faced minstrel casting/makeup techniques to rewrite African history as European history, and in so doing propagates the idea that European cultural centrality is more important than historical fact and the ever-evolving self-image of African-descended people as it is influenced by popular representations of people of color in Western media distributed worldwide.”

Nance, however, is just one talented black film-maker among many (Dee Rees, Tina Mabry, Haile Gerima, Julie Dash, Barry Jenkins et al) who have struggled to attract funding to tell artistic and personal stories outside of the monolithic, corporate world of mainstream entertainment which Bamboozled so acidly depicts (even if it is set in the world of TV rather than film.) Lee has long been vocal about the struggles he’s faced in raising funds to tell black-focused stories, and even he had to go cap in hand to fans on Kickstarter to crowd-fund his idiosyncratic, low-budget vampire movie Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014). Da Sweet Blood is his most excessive, least easily readable work since Bamboozled, but it can’t match his earlier film for sheer visceral impact.

Bamboozled, then, is a genuine one-off, but I can detect traces of its relentless, irritable, questioning approach in a variety of contemporary art. I see it in Justin Simien’s excellent college-set satire Dear White People (2014), which was inspired by horrific, real-life blackface parties at universities across America. I see it in the antic situational comedy of Key & Peele, whose best sketch, musical spoof “Negrotown”, compresses the madness, pathos and insight of Lee’s film into four-and-a-half harrowingly hilarious minutes. I see it in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins thrillingly audacious play An Octoroon (2013), which reconfigures blackface tropes in daring ways. Most of all I see it coursing through the veins of Paul Beatty’s scabrous satirical novel The Sellout (2015), about a shiftless young black Angeleno who hatches a plot to reintroduce racial segregation, and takes an elderly slave – a disturbed former “pickaninny” star of Little Rascals films – while he’s at it. Like Lee’s film, it plays as a shotgun blast to the face of formal convention, it’s stubbornly resistant to a single concrete interpretation, and it has a lot of very painful things to say about America today.

ABC’s enjoyably gentle sitcom Black-ish (2014-), meanwhile, simultaneously echoes Delacroix’s crisis – with its premise of a middle-class black ad executive (Anthony Anderson) jockeying for position in a white corporate space – and feels like the kind of show Delacroix, free of Dunwitty’s pressure, might have concocted himself.

Lastly, I couldn’t help but think of Bamboozled while poring over Ta-Nehisi Coates’s epic essay in the Atlantic, The Case for Reparations, which uncovers, in forensic detail, the institutional plunder of black Americans from slavery to redlining to mass incarceration and its destructive impact on families. Coates’s fury is more controlled than Lee’s, but it’s equally sincere, and his essay shares with Bamboozled the central imperative to look directly into the heart of past racial sins in order to plot a productive way forward.

It is time, then, to take a close look at Bamboozled, which deserves to be respected as much more than a mid-career oddity in Lee’s filmography. It is a vital work that’s equal parts crystal ball and cannonball: glittering and prophetic, heavy and dangerous.

[charbear177]

5 Reasons You Need To Watch Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story

I read all of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton books years ago and was so excited to hear Shonda Rhimes was turning these sexy love stories into an even sexier Netflix series. The first season premiered and it did not disappoint. While the first season evoked familiar emotions from the books, and maybe this is an unpopular opinion, the second season was good but left me feeling lukewarm about future seasons.

Fast forward to hearing about Queen Charlotte getting a six-episode, limited series, I was not sure what to expect. I knew about the Mad King George and that they had many children but not much else. The series premiered on May 4, 2023, and I was instantly sucked in and binged the series in a day. While I was sad when the series ended, I am hopeful for another season. If you liked Bridgerton, you do not want to miss Queen Charlotte.

5 Reasons To Watch Queen Charlotte

It’s Just So Good

In my opinion, it is the best of the Bridgerton series so far. I laughed and cried, and even yelled at the screen in frustration and concern for George. I love romance novels, heck I write them, but this series hits differently than your typical story because the characters were real people. The stakes were higher and a happy ending was not guaranteed for the couple.

In true Bridgerton style, there are a lot of steamy sex scenes, some not-so-steamy sex scenes, and some brief male nudity. The scenes do not feel gratuitous but add to the story. The term “even days” will have a whole new meaning and make you chuckle.

Makes You Hopeful For Love

The romance, the chemistry, and the sex in Queen Charlotte will make your heart yearn to be loved as deeply as King George loved his Queen. It’s young love and passion with some serious issues making a healthy marriage and relationship more challenging.

Points of view and past and present scenes make the love between Charlotte and George gut-wrenching. When George says, “I love you desperately. I cannot breathe when you are not near. I love you Charlotte. My heart calls your name,” even my heart felt that. Sorry, but it blew, “I burn for you” out of the water.

Makes Being Single Look Pretty Good

Romance, love, and passion are wonderful and can exist perfectly outside the confines of marriage. We know Lady Danbury from the Bridgerton series but in Queen Charlotte we get a chance to learn more about her relationship with Queen Charlotte, how her title came about, her marriage to Lord Danbury, and why she chose to never remarry.

Women were controlled by their husbands and if a woman had an abusive or terrible husband she was screwed. To become a wealthy widow, with complete autonomy for a woman in those days was a win. Days of leisure, a lover or two for fun, and money to keep you comfortable is all some woman need to be quite content in life.

The Beauty and Fashion

The costuming is stunning. We are treated to beautiful dress after beautiful dress, wonderfully paired with hair and wigs that are characters all on their own. All the glitz and glamour are set against the breathtaking backdrop of palaces and their perfectly manicured lawns and estates.

Looking at how exquisite the fashion is in Queen Charlotte almost makes me wish I could be transported back in time just to dress up and attend a ball. I said almost.

It’s Strangely Relatable

Whether you are young and passionately in love or older but still passionate and feeling your bloom you can relate. Or perhaps you fell for someone unavailable or that you cannot be with, or you’re in a loveless relationship or widowed. If you have loved, longed for, or lost a love you will feel a connection. Rich or poor, love and marriage issues transcends class but of course, I think many would prefer the latter.

Queen Charlotte will be emotionally difficult to watch at times but it’s a beautiful love story. Actually, there are several love stories to make your heart ache and break a little but it is so worth it. I hope you give it a watch and if you do let me know your thoughts.

[tayfabe75]

She is a maestro of self-determination, of writing her own story. The multihyphenate television creator Shonda Rhimes—no stranger to a plot twist—who has known Swift since she was a teenager, puts it simply: "She controls narrative not only in her work, but in her life," she says. "It used to feel like people were taking shots at her. Now it feels like she's providing the narrative—so there aren't any shots to be taken." Here, Swift has told me a story about redemption, about rising and falling only to rise again—a hero's journey. I do not say to her, in our conversation, that it did not always look that way from the outside—that, for example, when Reputation's lead single "Look What You Made Me Do" reached No. 1 on the charts, or when the album sold 1.3 million albums in the first week, second only to 1989, she did not look like someone whose career had died. She looked like a superstar who was mining her personal experience as successfully as ever. I am tempted to say this. But then I think, Who am I to challenge it, if that's how she felt? The point is: she felt canceled. She felt as if her career had been taken from her. Something in her had been lost, and she was grieving it. Maybe this is the real Taylor Swift effect: That she gives people, many of them women, particularly girls, who have been conditioned to accept dismissal, gaslighting, and mistreatment from a society that treats their emotions as inconsequential, permission to believe that their interior lives matter. That for your heart to break, whether it's from being kicked off a tour or by the memory of a scarf still sitting in a drawer somewhere or because somebody else controls your life's work, is a valid wound, and no, you're not crazy for being upset about it, or for wanting your story to be told. After all, not to be corny, haven't we all become selective autobiographers in the digital age as we curate our lives for our own audiences of any size—cutting away from the raw fabric of our lived experience to reveal the shape of the story we most want to tell, whether it's on our own feeds or the world's stage? I can't blame her for being better at it than everyone else.

December 6, 2023: Time Magazine details Taylor Swift's ability to craft her own narrative, comparing her story to a hero's journey. (source)

[rowanthane]

TITLE: KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVENS DOOR SETTING: PRIMRODIAL AUTO SHOP AND MC CLUB HOUSE EVENT: PRIMORDIAL MOTORCYCLE CLUB 40TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY TRIGGER WARNINGS: SHOOTING, GUN VIOLENCE, BLOOD, INJURY, HOSPITALS, SURGERY, DEATH

One minute she’s smiling, a retired club member from a few charters over telling her some story about a run he had gone on years ago that hadn’t quite panned out the way he had planned and ended with him somehow covered head to toe in blue paint. She’s watching Iris from the corner of her eye as she runs around the club house and ducks between the legs of members while someone chases her around. It’s light --- happy, even. Could almost convince herself it’s 2011 and this is just the way things always are. And then --- it’s not.

The sound of bullets have her ducking her head instinctively, shards of glass exploding around her as the bottles lining the back of the bar explode. Her first thought is Iris, and she can’t stop herself from looking around for her niece, heart practically beating out of her chest. She can’t see her and just prays that that means one of the many men wrapped around her little finger have ushered her into some kind of safety -- her thoughts are cut short at the sight of Owen Knox. It’s over so fast she barely even has time to register the gun in his hand, finger poised on the trigger before she’s hitting the ground, blinding pain shooting through her torso. Weirdly, she’s not panicking - not yet, anyway. All she’s thinking for those first few minutes is that the bar floor of the club house is a really shitty place to die, and she hopes Rhea had someone mop the floors earlier, at least. 

Hands on her shoulders make her flinch as she’s rolled onto her back. Wrong, a voice in her head thinks, conjuring up a memory of first aid classes when she was a teenage -- rule number one: don’t move the victim. Victim, is that what she is? She can’t linger on it now that she’s aware of those same hands on her face -- rough, warm, familiar. Andy. Her eyes open at the thought and he looks scared, so she knows it’s bad. Her mouth opens to say something I’m okay, I’m fine but she can’t say anything, choking on the thick metallic filling her mouth. Maybe it’s not okay, maybe she’s not fine. Her mind is going fuzzy, black spots dancing in her vision and she thinks maybe her father is here now, hands pressing against her chest and side and they’re both talking to her but she feels like she’s underwater and she can’t make out any of it. She’s too busy trying to keep her eyes open, trying to keep herself from being completely swallowed by the desire to give in and just go to sleep. 

Flashing lights manage to catch her eye and she feels her father’s hands replaced by someone else’s, paramedics hover over her, working together to pull her on a stretcher and she feels them start to lift her into ambulance. ‘Family only’ she hears one of them insisting and panic takes her over, a surge of energy hitting her just long enough for her hand to blindly reach out for Andy, eyes wide with fear and she can’t talk but they lock eyes and she knows he’ll know what she’s thinking. Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go --- stay with me, please. His grip on her hand is tight, unmovable and hears him bark out ‘she’s my wife!’ before they agree to let him climb in beside her. If she could, she’d laugh. They’ve spent the last five years in such a state of disarray only now to finally start getting on the right path ---- and she’s going to be dead in the next twenty minutes.

God really is a fucking asshole.

Her head is lolling to the side already, eyes heavy now that the adrenaline is starting to wear back off and she just wants to sleep. She can feel them putting pressure on her, there’s an oxygen mask on her face now and she almost feels like she can catch her breath. They’re taking her vitals and she can hear them talking over her. You’re going to be just fine, we’re only a few minutes away, keep your eyes open for us, you’ll be okay. Is she going to be okay though? She thinks about all the times she has said that when she just knows it isn’t the case, times when she was just trying to offer comfort to a patient who was beyond any means of treatment she could provide. Part of her wants to look down and see what the damage is but she’s so tired and before she can even think to move -- she feels herself slip into darkness.

37 YEAR OLD ADULT FEMALE, MULTIPLE GUN SHOT WOUNDS TO LEFT SHOULDER AND CHEST, SHATTERED COLLARBONE, POSSIBLE COLLAPSED LUNG. UNCONSCIOUS, NON-RESPONSIVE.

They don’t know the full extent as they wheel her into the emergency room where Addison Fisher, despite everyone telling her ‘you can’t operate on family’ is waiting and ready to go but Addie takes one look at her daughter and knows they don’t have time to wait for another surgeon to come in, and puts her game face on to meet them in the operating room.

Her shoulder is the easy fix -- torn muscle and ripped tendons don’t need surgery, just a shitload of rehab and work. Someone else patches that wound up with Addie works diligently on her daughter’s burst lung as best she can. It’s a fucking mess --- she barely knows where to start but she keeps her head about her, doesn’t let herself panic and loose sight of the task at hand. One cut at a time, she’ll figure it out. She’s calm, until suddenly she’s not. The sound of Rowan’s heart monitor echos around the operating room, everyone’s stomachs dropping when they see her vitals dropping right in front of them. 

‘We’re losing her.’ 

It’s not what she expects. There’s no white light, no dark tunnel she has to walk down, no choir singing or pearly gates. It’s just her in a small room with pale pink walls with white flowers painted on them, white lace curtains hanging from the ceiling and making a canopy around the table in the middle of the room. Her breath catches at the sight, heart jolting in her chest of someone perched on one of the chairs, tracing crayon over the sheet of paper laid out in front of her and even though it makes no sense, even though she has know way of knowing what this is, she does.

“Maddie?”

She looks up and Rowan can’t tell if it’s joy or sorrow that is taking over her.

“Hi mama. Come colour with me.”

She doesn’t even realize she’s moving until she finds herself sitting on the chair beside the little girl and she takes a minute to really look at her. A mess of blonde curls frame her face, chubby cheeks glowing with just a hint of pink — she has her nose, Rowan thinks to herself as she notes the slope of it. Maddie looks up from her paper again and smiles — all white teeth and sparkling baby blue eyes that remind her so much of Andy’s.

Huh. Guess Heaven does exist, she thinks to herself. And then for some reason she looks around the room again as if she is expecting someone else to have shown up, but it’s just them. Good, maybe that means Cronus is burning in hell where he belongs. A surge of smug happiness washes over her at the thought and she wonders if that alone is going to be enough for her to end up right there beside him. Wouldn’t that be a way to spend eternity.

A musical voice pulls her from her thoughts, bringing her back to the here and now —- whatever that might be. “We don’t have very long. Nana is gonna fix you soon.” So she’s not dead—- maybe not completely. Maddie’s voice is soft, her eyes returned to the picture on the table in front of her and Rowan follows her gaze to see a page full of stick figures, names of her family members scrawled over top of each one. “I’m holding hands with Iris,” a chubby finger comes down to point at two stick figures, one pink and one purple, with their arms touching. “I play with her when she sleeps sometimes.”

“That’s really pretty, baby. Is that your dad?” Rowan leans over, points to the blue figure with the word “daddy” written over it in chunky block letters.

“Yeah,” Maddie nods proudly before giggling like she just thought of the funniest joke in the world. “I gave him a ponytail even though you an’ uncle Ollie make fun of it.”

A loud, wet laugh pulls from the back of her throat and she shakes her head. “Well he does look pretty silly when he does that.”

“He needs a hair cut!” Maddie giggles in response, nose scrunching up in a way that reminds Rowan so much of her and Ryan when they were kids. She sighs suddenly, smile softening. “You have to go soon.”

“What if I want to stay?”

“Silly mama,” Maddie shakes her head and slips out of her chair, crawling up onto Rowan’s lap instead, fingers reaching out to play with the necklace around her neck while Rowan’s practically cling to the white dress she’s wearing. “You can’t stay, it’s not your turn yet.” Rowan opens her mouth to argue but cuts herself off when Maddie continues to babble, hands landing on the side of her mothers face. “Nana and Poppy and Aunt Ryan would be too sad. I know you guys fight a lot, and you think they don’t like you but they love you a whole lot. And nana is workin’ real hard right now to make you okay.”

She nods, not trusting herself to say anything.

“And grandma is worried about daddy. She’s scared about what’ll happen if you stay. He’s real sad right now, mama. I don’t like it when he cries.” A sniff of her own follows soon after and Rowan’s hands come up to cup chubby cheeks and her thumbs smooth over the flushed skin.

Selfishly, she doesn’t care. Not about any of them right now. This is what she had spent two years literally begging for, wasn’t it? And if she’s dead... well she doesn’t have to deal with all of that, does she? Eternity in this little room with this little girl sounds pretty fucking good. “I think they’d be okay,” Rowan reassures her in a hushed tone to which Maddie just shakes her head, stubborn expression clouding her eyes. Spitting image of Rowan.

“No they won’t. But one day you can come back! And I can show you all my stuff and all my friends I have here.” Her mouth opens to protest again but she’s cut off by little hands pressing against the side of her face in a mirror image of her own. “You gotta go home now. I love you, mama. Tell Iris I’m gonna come over later, and tell daddy no more cryin’.”

Her first instinct is to fight against this. It’s too soon, this wasn’t enough —- but nothing is ever going to be enough, and she can already feel herself slipping away from this moment, a harsh tug trying to bring her back to reality. And so she nods, because leaving is inevitable and she doesn’t want this to end on a bad note. “Okay, baby, I will.” She leans forward, lips pressing against Maddie’s hair, eyes falling shut and she prays that she remembers all this when she comes to. “I love you too, peanut.”

And then it’s over.

Hours later the sound of a heart monitor makes her stir. A steady, consistent beep—- it’s annoying. Her brows furrow, eyes blinking a few times as she opens them. She’s uncomfortable, a dull ache in her stomach and she feels like she got run over by a fucking truck — but she smiles. Because whatever had happened, whether it was a wildly vivid dream created by the cocktail of medication she was surely on, or a hallucination from the pain, or whether or not she actually had died— and she’ll find out later, technically, she did— and gone to Heaven for a few minutes, she remembers.

[unpopularly-opinionated]

I’ve been watching How to Get Away With Murder lately and let me just say I’ve had several topics that this fucking show has made me want to blog about that I just don’t wanna spam y’all with so let me bullet point this for you:

Warning: Long AF post about complete nonsense.

1. I never finished Scandal (another series by Shonda Rhimes) but I sure did watch a shit ton of it and I used to genuinely think it was a great show at the time. Haven’t seen it in a while so I’m not sure how exactly I’d feel now, but if watching HTGAWM has shown me anything it’s that god does this woman suck at writing characters. She’s pretty good at writing serialized legal/political dramas, I’ll give her that, but she legitimately only has like maybe 4-5 character archetypes that she just copied and pasted from Scandal onto this show, and boy do the flaws show in this series.

You’ve got the strong, black female lead whose job it is to basically fix problems, ethically or unethically, she pretends to care but doesn’t really.

You’ve got the sociopathic do-it-all guy who does all the unethical dirty work including breaking and entering, kidnapping, killing, destroying evidence, planting evidence, etc. with a troubled past of being in prison.

You’ve got the incredibly basic girl who starts off all shy and cute like she’s an innocent little sunflower, who then falls in love with the sociopathic do-it-all guy which inevitably leads her down a similar road of corruption.

You’ve even got the soft-spoken, ‘dreamy’ white man that the lead has the hots for (as well as the mentally-damaged white girl).

There’s probably more, but honestly that’s all I can remember from Scandal at this point. It’s actually kind of insane to me how it’s literally just the same exact characters just transplanted to a different plot. I don’t know much about her personally, but she strikes me as someone who would probably make bank writing romance novels or Y/N fanfic.

2. Binge watching shows has ruined pacing of older shows, such as HTGAWM, because without that weeklong break in the middle (sometimes longer for holidays) you overlook details because you don’t have time to process them properly, and oftentimes plot points that require time passing (such as relationships, breakups, etc.) can fail completely because it’s not really believable when a couple is together one episode, breaks up to be w/ someone else the next, says “I love you” the next, and is pregnant in the next (yes, this is something that actually happened in HTGAWM).

3. Just in general, the writing for this show really begins to plummet after just S1, but mostly S2. I’ll give them credit where credit is due, a lot of shows that begin with this ‘hook’-like idea--in this case murder and how to get away with it--tend to fail miserably by wrapping up that initial hook in the first season and then winging it every season after that. This show surprisingly doesn’t do that, and every season begins with a new murder that they then have to “get away with” (almost comically-so).

But as I said, this woman doesn’t seem to know how to write characters, at least not likeable or consistent ones. It sometimes feels like I’m watching reality TV or something because a lot of the conflict between characters is incredibly forced. I’m halfway through S4 and despite the fact that these people love to profess how much they love each other, they’re a family, etc. in nearly every episode you’ve got someone “not trusting” someone else, someone keeping secrets “just because”, or someone yelling at someone else for something because it’s “all their fault” when like none of that is ever actually true.

Oliver and Conner broke up because Oliver felt like the relationship wasn’t healthy because, even after he lied to Conner about something really fucking important, Conner instantly forgave him, which yeah sure that absolutely sucks and is a totally valid reason to break up with someone, albeit a sad one because obviously you two still love each other...except in the next fucking episode, Conner is hooking up w/ strangers and Oliver is genuinely considering jumping into another relationship, and also Oliver is changing his story and claiming the reason he broke up w/ Conner was actually Conner’s fault because of like trust issues or something which just isn’t true at all?? It was a wild retcon that came out of nowhere for no other reason other than I guess she needed them to sleep w/ other people that season.

Also I’m sorry but how is Michaela supposed to be even a remotely redeemable character when she’s written to be this huge uptight, racist, homophobic (or possibly biphobic), bitch? I don’t think she ever gets better. Right from the get go in S1, she has this whole ordeal over her fiancé having had one gay experience many years ago when he was younger, and like okay I would understand it if it was just about the fact that he didn’t tell her about it, but she continued to spiral out over it, accusing any man even in the vicinity of him as being his secret lover, and continues to badmouth him as “gay” (I can’t write tone here, but she says it in a very accusing way) to the others including Conner who is literally gay. There’s also never really a refutation to this either, so by the time Aiden is completely out of the picture, I guess we’re left to just assume he is actually gay, despite all possible evidence pointing to the contrary. But I guess all of this is A-OK because she becomes GBFs w/ Conner later for...some reason, I guess.

Then there’s the way she treats Asher which, in the beginning I was like okay fair, he’s the douchey frat boy character. Totally understandable why you’d treat him like an asshole. But when they hook up and eventually get together, she is so unbelievably racist towards him??? She’s constantly going on about “white boy” this and “white people” that, and the poor dude just takes it because he’s super whipped.

The way she also talks about other black people is even off, like if she wasn’t black (and Shonda Rhimes wasn’t black) I would daresay it comes across as fetishistic. In fact, a lot of this show is written like fetish porn of black people. God help if this was written by a white woman which ironically enough, it really does feel like this was written by a white woman. I’m not even joking, if I didn’t already know who Shonda Rhimes was, I would swear to you this show was written by a white woman who really loves black people, to an uncomfortable degree. I’m not even talking about cringy “black empowerment” either, that’s not what bothers me. It’s one thing to promote strong black (female) characters in a show which you know it’s fine I guess, whatever, but this show fetishizes that instead. Black people aren’t just strong and powerful, they’re the strongest and the most powerful. It’s creepy and weird.

At this point, the only reason I’m watching it is because I like Viola Davis and despite her character being iffy at times, she’s still a tremendous actress. And ofc I like Colliver, even though it’s messy a lot of the time. I know I just sat here and shat on the show a bunch, and to be clear it’s definitely not a show I would ever recommend, but it’s not strictly-speaking terrible. It just has a lot of bad moments/elements to it.

[calzona-ga]

In her unauthorized book, Lynette Rice explores the stories behind some of the ABC drama's biggest moments, including — in this exclusive excerpt — the factors that led to McDreamy's shocking death.

In How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy, author Lynette Rice recounts the ABC medical drama’s eventful 16-year history, revealing new details behind some of the show’s biggest departures. Included in the unauthorized, 320-page oral history (St. Martin’s Press, Sept. 21, $29.99) is a chapter that offers new insight into leading man Patrick Dempsey’s shocking exit in season 11 of the Shonda Rhimes-created drama. In the chapter, Rice speaks with Dempsey’s co-stars and exec producers who were present during filming of his final days on Grey’s Anatomy, and reveals claims of “HR issues” that contributed to the death of his alter-ego, Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd.

“There were HR issues. It wasn’t sexual in any way. He sort of was terrorizing the set. Some cast members had all sorts of PTSD with him,” recalls exec producer James D. Parriott, who was brought back to the series to oversee Dempsey’s exit.

In more than 80 interviews with current and former cast- and crewmembers, Rice, an editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly, also explores the show’s early days, recounts the thinking behind some of its more polarizing storylines and offers exclusive details about the show’s behind-the-scenes culture.

“After 17 seasons, fans still can’t get enough of Grey’s Anatomy,” Rice tells THR. But what went down behind the scenes was just as dramatic as what viewers saw every Thursday. I’m excited for fans to read what I learned about those early days, along with what it was like to work for Shonda Rhimes, and why the drama was so freakin’ headline-prone.”

Below, The Hollywood Reporter shares an excerpt — the full eighth chapter — from How to Save a Life, and tune in Friday to TV’s Top 5 for an interview with Rice about her book and the other big reveals she uncovered in her reporting for it.

(Reps for ABC, ABC Signature, Shondaland, and Dempsey declined comment on the reveals in Rice’s book.)

“He’s Very Dreamy, but He’s Not the Sun,” Or, How Grey’s Anatomy Loved — Then Learned to Live Without — Patrick Dempsey Ellen Pompeo may have played the titular role, but for many fans over many years, Patrick Dempsey was the real draw to Grey’s Anatomy. Some of it had to do with his celebrity: Dempsey was the most famous member of the original cast at the time of the pilot and brought with him quite a cult following from his 1987 movie Can’t Buy Me Love. But a lot of it was due to the way Rhimes wrote her McDreamy and how Dempsey depicted him. James D. Parriott I would say, “The guy would never say that,” and Shonda would say, “He’s McDreamy. He’s the perfect man. He would say that.” I’d say, “Okay. It’s your show.” Eric Buchman Shonda had a very clear idea of how important it was to keep Derek as this almost idealized love interest, not just for Meredith but for the audience. Naturally, the writers—especially writers who had been working on one-hour dramas for a while—were like, “Well, maybe have McDreamy make a big mistake in surgery and kill somebody. Or he develops an addiction of some kind. What is his deep, dark secret?” Shonda was very insistent: that’s not the character we do that with. Even when you find out he’s married, that was done in a very sympathetic way that kept him being a hero. He was wronged by his spouse and in spite of it all he was still gonna give his marriage a second chance. Stacy McKee Shonda was protective of McDreamy, but it was really with an eye toward being protective of Meredith. I don’t think the two were separate from one another. I don’t think she wanted to put something out there that maybe on the surface might seem a little frivolous. At its core, there was something really substantial that she wanted to say. She wanted to be very specific about the type of relationship values that she put out there. Tony Phelan I was in editing with Shonda once, and it was the scene where Meredith and Derek had broken up. He comes over and she’s like, “I can’t remember the last time we kissed.” And he says, “I remember. You were wearing this and you smelled of this …”

Joan Rater “Your shampoo smelled like flowers, you had that sweater on …” He described their last kiss. Tony Phelan Typically in editing you start on Derek, then you cut to Meredith for a reaction, and then you’ll go back to him. I noticed that we weren’t ever cutting back to Meredith. I asked why. Shonda said, “Because the woman in Iowa who’s watching this show wants to believe that Patrick is talking to her, and if you cut back to Meredith, it pushes them out of it.” In those special moments, we would just lock into Derek and let him do his thing. Joan Rater And he was a master at it. Patrick Dempsey He’s the ideal man, and that’s what Shonda constructed. There’s a projection [of him] onto me when you come in contact with fans, certainly with the younger and older fans. There is a certain amount of expectation. There is a responsibility to it. It made me grow, too. There were good qualities [of his] that you work on to obtain. Off camera, Dempsey was equally as charismatic to his fellow actors, crew members, and anyone who would come to visit the set. Lauren Stamile I was going in to meet him, and I remember I had this little cardigan sweater on and I took it off before I got into the room. Dempsey is one of those people—it’s almost like there’s a light shining around his body, and you feel like you’re the only person in the room. I got so hot and I remember saying, “Gosh, I would take off my sweater if I had one on because I’m so hot, but I took it off.” I was just babbling. He said, “You look nice,” and I said, “You look nicer.” I felt so awkward and he was so gracious and lovely. I was having a nervous breakdown. It’s like this “it” factor. I was like, God, whatever he has, I wish I had. I think it was very obvious how nervous I was, and he went out of his way to make sure he introduced me to everybody and made sure I felt comfortable, which he certainly didn’t have to do. But he did. Joan Rater He knew I had a giant crush on him, and he loved it. And when we’d go to table reads—I was an actress at one point in my life—they would always give me Meredith if Ellen wasn’t there. And I’d be getting my chicken tenders at craft services before the table read and he’d come up behind me and say, “Are you reading Meredith?” in my ear, like, so sexy. I’d be like, Oh my God. I mean, I could barely … I could not look at him. Tina Majorino I worked with Patrick a ton. I love him so much. We had a really great time working together. I think he’s such a great actor and he really made me laugh a lot. I feel like we had a good dynamic in scenes together, and it was always fun to play opposite him. Yes, he’s that charismatic in real life. Yes, his hair is that awesome. Yes, he is dreamy up close.

Chandra Wilson Patrick Dempsey will forever be known as Grey’s Anatomy’s McDreamy. Derek Shepherd is a permanent part of television history.

Norman Leavitt He is a big, personable guy.

Jeannine Renshaw We all love Patrick. Patrick is a sweetheart. If I saw him on the street, I’d give him a hug. I love the guy.

Mark Wilding I’ve always had a soft spot for Patrick. He really does try to do the right thing. Brooke Smith, who played Dr. Erica Hahn, remembers how Dempsey defended her when the decision was made to fire her from the show in 2008. Brooke Smith I remember calling him and saying, “Oh my God, they said they can’t write for me anymore, so I guess I’m leaving.” And he was like, “What are you talking about? You’re the only one they’re writing for.” Which at that time, it kind of did feel that way. But I guess someone didn’t like that. They gave me a statement [to release, about her departure] and I never said it. Patrick said that he actually took it out of his jacket on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and read the statement. He won’t let me forget it. He was like, “I defended you, see?” And it was true.

By season eleven, however, fans saw a disturbing break in MerDer’s once unbreakable bond. Six episodes had gone by without a peep from Derek, who was supposedly in Washington, D.C., where he had apparently made out with a research fellow. Fans began threatening to bolt if their hero didn’t return soon to Seattle. “I have never missed one episode,” wrote a fan on Dempsey’s Facebook page. “But I swear if [Rhimes] kills you off I’m done.” But there was a critical reason for Derek’s strange absence: behind the scenes, there was talk of Dempsey’s diva-like fits and tension between him and Pompeo. To help manage the explosive situation, executive producer James D. Parriott was brought back in to serve as a veritable Dempsey whisperer.

Patrick Dempsey [That] was the first year that I haven’t been in every episode. I [was] in every episode since the pilot— close to 250 episodes. That [was a] huge run. James D. Parriott Shonda needed an OG to come in as sort of a showrunner for fourteen episodes. There were HR issues. It wasn’t sexual in any way. He sort of was terrorizing the set. Some cast members had all sorts of PTSD with him. He had this hold on the set where he knew he could stop production and scare people. The network and studio came down and we had sessions with them. I think he was just done with the show. He didn’t like the inconvenience of coming in every day and working. He and Shonda were at each other’s throats.

Jeannine Renshaw There were times where Ellen was frustrated with Patrick and she would get angry that he wasn’t working as much. She was very big on having things be fair. She just didn’t like that Patrick would complain that “I’m here too late” or “I’ve been here too long” when she had twice as many scenes in the episode as he did. When I brought it up to Patrick, I would say, “Look around you. These people have been here since six thirty a.m.” He would go, “Oh, yeah.” He would get it. It’s just that actors tend to see things from their own perspective. He’s like a kid. He’s so high energy and would go, “What’s happening next?” He literally goes out of his skin, sitting and waiting. He wants to be out driving his race car or doing something fun. He’s the kid in class who wants to go to recess.

Patrick Dempsey It’s ten months, fifteen hours a day. You never know your schedule, so your kid asks you, “What are you doing on Monday?” And you go, “I don’t know,” because I don’t know my schedule. Doing that for eleven years is challenging. But you have to be grateful, because you’re well compensated, so you can’t really complain because you don’t really have a right. You don’t have control over your schedule. So, you have to just be flexible.

Longtime Crew Member Poor Patrick. I’m not defending his schtick. I like him, but he was the Lone Ranger. All of these actresses were getting all this power. All the rogue actresses would go running to Shonda and say, “Hey, Patrick’s doing this. Patrick’s late for work. He’s a nightmare.” He was just shut out in the cold. His behavior wasn’t the greatest, but he had nowhere to go. He was so miserable. He had no one to talk to. When Sandra left, I remember him telling me, “I should’ve left then, but I stayed on because they showed me all this money. They just were dumping money on me.”

Patrick Dempsey It [was] hard to say no to that kind of money. How do you say no to that? It’s remarkable to be a working actor, and then on top of that to be on a show that’s visible. And then on top of that to be on a phenomenal show that’s known around the world, and play a character who is beloved around the world. It’s very heady. It [was] a lot to process, and not wanting to let that go, because you never know whether you will work again and have success again.

Jeannine Renshaw A lot of the complaining … I think Shonda finally witnessed it herself, and that was the final straw. Shonda had to say to the network, “If he doesn’t go, I go.” Nobody wanted him to leave, because he was the show. Him and Ellen. Patrick is a sweetheart. It messes you up, this business.

James D. Parriott I vaguely recall something like that, but I can’t be sure. It would have happened right toward the end, because I know they were negotiating and negotiating, trying to figure out what to do. We had three different scenarios that we actually had to break because we didn’t know until I think about three days before he came back to set which one we were going to go with. We didn’t know if he was going to be able to negotiate his way out of it. We had a whole story line where we were going to keep him in Washington, D.C., so we could separate him from the rest of the show. He would not have to work with Ellen again. Then we had the one where he comes back, doesn’t die, and we figure out what Derek’s relationship with Meredith would be. Then there was the one we did. It was kind of crazy. We didn’t know if he was going to be able to negotiate his way out of it. It was ultimately decided that just bringing him back was going to be too hard on the other actors. The studio just said it was going to be more trouble than it was worth and decided to move on.

Stacy McKee I don’t think there was any way to exit him without him dying. He and Meredith were such an incredibly bonded couple at that point. It would be completely out of character if he left his kids. There was no exit that would honor that character other than if he were to die. Patrick Dempsey I don’t remember the date [I got the news]. It was not in the fall. Maybe February or March. It was just a natural progression. And the way everything was unfolding in a very organic way, it was like, “Okay! This is obviously the right time.” Things happened very quickly. We were like, “Oh, this is where it’s going to go.”

So that was that: McDreamy would die in episode twenty-one of season eleven, even though Dempsey was in year one of his recently signed two-year contract extension. Rhimes wrote a script that was befitting of her lead’s heroic persona: she began “How to Save a Life” by having Derek witness a car crash and helping the injured. Once it appeared everyone was out of harm’s way, Derek continues on his road trip but is suddenly broadsided by a truck.

Rob Hardy (Director) The paramedics leave. He’s there by himself. He’s having a moment. The nice music is playing, and all of a sudden, bang. It comes out of nowhere, which, you know, is how accidents happen. So as opposed to watching it as a viewer, we saw the accident happen through Derek’s perspective. Derek ends up at Dillard Medical Center, a hospital far from Grey Sloan and the talented doctors who work there. His eyes are open, but his brain is severely damaged. No one hears his plea for a CT scan; he can’t speak. To help keep the episode a secret, the scenes were shot in an abandoned hospital in Hawthorne, California, about twenty-two miles from the show’s home studio in Los Feliz.

Mimi Melgaard It was really hard on all of us because it was so secretive and we had so many different locations. We shot at this closed-down hospital that was absolutely creepy haunted. All the scenes there were so sad anyway, and in this yucky-feeling haunted hospital? It was really weird. His whole last episode was really tough. Patrick Dempsey It was like any other day. It was just another workday. There was still too much going on. You’re in the midst of it—you’re not really processing it. Rob Hardy Here’s a guy who’s immobile. Now you’re inside of his head. We were trying to make that feel scary from the perspective of a person who’s used to being in control, from a person who usually has the power of life and death in his own hands. But now he doesn’t have the ability to speak on his own behalf.

Samantha Sloyan When I went to audition, I didn’t recognize any of these doctors’ names. I assumed they were just dummy sides so people wouldn’t ruin the story line or anything like that. All we knew is that we were dealing with a man who’s been in a car accident. I had no idea that it was going to be Derek. I just figured I was going to be a guest doctor and that whoever this person was who was injured, was going to be just a character on the show. Once it became clear what we were working on, I was like, Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe this is the episode I’m on.

Mike McColl (Dr. Paul Castello) I signed an NDA before they would release the script to me. I was reading it in my house, and I was like, “Oh, my God.” I didn’t tell anyone, including my agents. I just said, “This is a really great booking. It’s a great role on Grey’s.” And they didn’t know anything until it aired.

Savannah Paige Rae (Winnie) The first scene I shot was actually the sentimental scene when I’m saying, “It’s a beautiful day to save lives, right?” I’m in the hospital room with Derek and talking to him. Even though I never watched the show, I recognized the value of the episode I was in and just really took it to heart. It was so special that I got to be a part of it.

Rob Hardy [Patrick] had a lot of emotions during the whole shoot, which evolved. I think when we first started, he was very calm and cool … the same Patrick that I remembered when I worked on the show a year or so before. With each passing day, he was a lot more emotional. A lot more was on his mind, and that would show itself in different ways. The finality of the episode and for his character was setting in. You’ve become a global icon on this show and then in five, four, three, two, a day … it’s over.

James D. Parriott Patrick was very cooperative and good.

Mike McColl When I met Patrick, he’s lying on a stretcher and we’re rushing him into the ER. I just introduced myself, shook his hand, and was like, “Man, I cannot tell you what an honor it is to be the guy to take you down.” He loved it. He could not have been nicer to me and was funny through the whole shoot. He was on the table in front of me there when I cut his chest open and all that stuff. He gave me a hug at the end. It was a real privilege to be a part of TV history in that way.

Samantha Sloyan I remember him being incredibly kind. They had his neck in a brace, and he’s strapped down to the board, so there wasn’t a ton of chatting. I remember him being really kind, but it was clearly intense for him.

Stacy McKee It was such a beautiful piece of storytelling. I knew this event was going to be a really sad, horrible event for Meredith, but I also knew it was going to be the beginning of such an incredible chapter for Meredith.

Dempsey completed his final hours of shooting on a rainy night. There was no goodbye party, no goodbye cake. Maybe that’s because some cast members were left out of the loop. James Pickens, Jr., told ABC News that the cast “didn’t know a whole lot. It was kind of on the fly. So whatever information we got, we pretty much got it kind of right before it happened.”

Caterina Scorsone (Dr. Amelia Shepherd) I didn’t get to say goodbye to Patrick when he left. I do think that helped, because I’ve been using the character of Derek in my internal landscape since Private Practice. Derek was the stability in Amelia’s life. He became a father figure after they watched robbers shoot their father. When he was suddenly gone from the show, we didn’t have that closure, so I got to play it out. She’s about to use drugs again before Owen confronts her in a way that she finally talks about her feelings about losing Derek. She doesn’t end up using.

James D. Parriott The day he left, that was my last day. There was a certain sadness to it, but I think he was relieved. I mean, I think it took a toll on him, too.

Rob Hardy I didn’t see other actors showing up and saying, “Hey, it’s the last day! Wanted to come and wish you well.” I didn’t get that. It was more the Patrick show. We were in the Patrick world, and then Ellen came, and there was definitely a lot of emotion that both of them had individually … not necessarily together. It was more so her being there on the day that he died. He had his own way of being with that, and the same thing with her. It was like two people who grew up together and … here we are. They had their own way of reflecting.

Patrick Dempsey I very quietly left. It was beautiful. It was raining, which was really touching. I got in my Panamera, got in rush-hour traffic, and two hours later I was home. Big news like this doesn’t stay quiet for long. Both Michael Ausiello—who left EW in 2010 to launch the news site TVLine—and Lesley Goldberg of The Hollywood Reporter learned two weeks prior to Dempsey’s final episode that he would be leaving the show. No reporter worth their salt wants to sit on a scoop—least of all one as huge as this—but Ausiello and Goldberg didn’t want to spoil the outcome for fans, so they agreed to hold the story until after the episode aired. I eventually found out, too, but in the nuttiest way imaginable: I was standing on the set of CSI: Cyber, watching Patricia Arquette talk about some droll techno-criminal. Unfortunately, the publicist also cc’d Dempsey’s manager and ABC publicist while trying to give me a major story, so I couldn’t immediately report the scoop. But I did use the information to successfully negotiate the one and only exit interview with Dempsey. Two weeks before his final episode, I met him and his publicist at Feed Body & Soul in Venice, California, for a story that would hit newsstands on April 24. He seemed a little shell-shocked and at one point choked up, but at the time he said nothing about how his on-set behavior may have contributed to his ouster. My editor, Henry Goldblatt, wanted to put him on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, but he couldn’t guarantee to ABC that no one would see it before the episode aired. Good thing we didn’t: some subscribers got the issue on the morning of Dempsey’s final episode— and one actually tweeted the story. Our PR department tried to get the tweets removed, but the cat was out of the bag: some fans found out early that McDreamy was about to be McHistory. Outlets like Variety reported how the story got out early, while our PR department released this statement: “We are surprised that an EW subscriber may have received their issue a day earlier than planned. We always try our best to bring readers exclusive news first. We would like to apologize to fans of the show that learned the news ahead of time.” Dempsey’s final episode was watched by 8.83 million viewers—the show’s largest audience since the premiere that season. Variety even pontificated whether the ratings boost was due to my exclusive with Dempsey.

Lesley Goldberg (The Hollywood Reporter) I’m used to working with networks to hold news as part of their efforts to guard against plot spoilers. But the way Patrick Dempsey’s exit was handled involved a layer of paranoia and secrecy that has been unlike anything I’ve seen in my reporting career. News that he was leaving, and his character being killed off, would have been a major story considering how big the show is domestically and internationally. However, it also would have meant spoiling the episode and, more important, damaging key relationships I’ve worked hard to build. At some point, publishing the news of Dempsey’s exit before the episode aired became an ethical question of what was more important—a big story and its subsequent traffic, which would have come no matter what, or the relationships and trust that it took years to craft. Ultimately, I still published early because EW subscribers received the issue with Lynette’s Dempsey interview before the episode aired.

Mike McColl The morning after Derek’s last episode aired, my daughter sent me a link that was on YouTube or Facebook or something. I actually pulled it up to look at it, and it was a Grey’s Anatomy showbiz cheat sheet. It asked the question “Who is the attending doctor who killed Derek ‘McDreamy’ Shepherd?” It included a photo that I posted from the set. I had on a bloody rubber glove and was in my scrubs and mask. I never obviously would have posted this before it aired. I posted it well after the episode aired, and I [captioned it] “McDeadly.” This writer said something like, “Kill McDeadly.” Maybe that’s why the producer didn’t choose a big-name actor to be the one who killed our beloved McDreamy! I want to be ultrasensitive to these hard-core fans because it means so much to them, and I certainly didn’t mean in that case to make light of it. It’s just, I’m an actor, and I recognize it for what it is. Is everybody clear on the fact that this is just pretend and Patrick knew he was going to be leaving the show? It was just like, “God. He’s okay. He really is okay.”

Peter Horton Derek was going to be there forever with Meredith because you went through a whole journey with them. That was incredibly fulfilling. So even if he’s not there, he’s there. I don’t think any of us really worried about that going away because by then you were so invested in it. The show can last as it has for years.

Patrick Dempsey Lots of people [miss him]. “It’s good to see you alive” is the comment I get. I’m like, “Yes, I’m very much alive in reruns.” People were really invested in that relationship. I knew it would be heavy. Very happy to have moved on with a different chapter in my life.

Samantha Sloyan The montage just killed me, when Meredith says, “It’s okay, you can go.” God, I’m getting choked up just thinking about it. The chemistry they have as a pair and the way they were able to build that and sustain it! So many of these relationships are, like, “Will they, won’t they,” and then it wears thin. They sustained it for the duration of their relationship on the show, and it’s just, I think, a testament to what those two created. It was just unbelievable.

Pompeo addressed Dempsey’s departure with a tweet that focused solely on his character, not on how she spent eleven years working side by side with him: “There are so many people out there who have suffered tremendous loss and tragedy. Husbands and wives of soldiers, victims of senseless violence, and parents who have lost children. People who get up every day and do what feels like is the impossible. So it is for these people and in the spirit of resilance [sic] I am honored and excited to tell the story of how Meredith goes on in the face of what feels like the impossible.” Meanwhile, fans futilely created a Change.org petition to reinstate McDempsey, while other, more desperate ones simply tweeted “We Hate You” to Rhimes.

Shonda Rhimes Derek Shepherd is and will always be an incredibly important character—for Meredith, for me, and for the fans. I absolutely never imagined saying goodbye to our McDreamy. Patrick Dempsey’s performance shaped Derek in a way that I know we both hope became a meaningful example— happy, sad, romantic, painful, and always true—of what young women should demand from modern love. His loss will be felt by all.

Talk about the mother (father?) of all postscripts: In November of 2020 Dempsey reprised his role as McDreamy in the season opener—but only in Meredith’s dreams. Stricken with COVID-19, an unconscious Meredith “imagined” reuniting with her husband on the beach. After talking exclusively to Deadline and saying how it was “really a very healing process, and really rewarding,” Dempsey would return for more beach-based episodes that would ultimately stand out as the best moments of season seventeen. “It was a second chance thing,” one ABC executive told me at the time. “Shonda likes a comeback. Also, they wanted him in their last season.”

[cinema-tv-etc]

Here Are 7 Wild, Wacky, And Truly Unbelievable Things From "Inventing Anna" That Happened IRL, And 6 Things That Were Made Up For The Show The truth is honestly just as strange as fiction.

In case you're not watching, the show follows the legendary Anna Delvey, who claimed to be a German heiress with over $60 million in bank accounts overseas. Delvey (whose real last name is Sorokin) became a staple of the New York social scene, and was able to con businesses into loaning her massive amounts of money so she could start her own social club, only to have the whole scheme unravel.

The show is based on a 2018 article written by Jessica Pressler for The Cut, and while it nails a lot of the IRL details, showrunner Shonda Rhimes took some creative liberties in telling Anna's story.

I broke down which plot points are fact and which are fiction, and TBH, some of them might surprise you: Major spoilers ahead, so if you haven't finished the show yet, proceed with caution!

1. Fact: Yes, Anna really did steal a jet. If you've finished the show, you might recall that Anna (played by Julia Garner) "steals" a private jet when she charters it to take her to billionaire Warren Buffet's annual conference held in Omaha, Nebraska, and ends up never paying for it. As wild as it sounds, this did actually happen! Anna and Rob Wiesenthal, the CEO of Blade, a company that chartered private jets and helicopters, ran in similar social circles. When Anna chartered a $35,000 private jet from New Jersey to Omaha, Wiesenthal thought nothing of it. Anna sent the company a forged wire transfer confirmation, and the payment obviously never came."We’ve let people slide in the past, quite frankly, and they’ve paid," Kathleen McCormack, Blade's CFO testified during Anna's trial. Because Wiesenthal socially knew Anna and the types of people she hung out with, "we felt she was good for payment, so we booked her for the flight."

2. Fiction: Anna's boyfriend, Chase Sikorski, is technically not a real person. While the original magazine article mentions that Anna had a boyfriend, he is never mentioned by name. Instead, he is referred to as "a futurist on the TED-Talks circuit who’d been profiled in The New Yorker." In fact, Chase Sikorski (Saamer Usmani) is a completely made-up character. Last week,  Anna shared on her Instagram stories she would share the name of her ex-boyfriend with media outlets for $10,000, but friends beat her to it, revealing that Anna used to date Hunter Lee Soik, a tech entrepreneur. “Hunter is the person who got her into the scene,” a source told Page Six. “He is a social person globally. No one knew what he did, but he was always giving advice on how to climb the corporate ladder.”

3. Fact: Vivian Kent (aka Jessica Pressler) was pregnant while writing the article. Jessica Pressler, the journalist who the character of Vivian Kent (played by Anna Chlumsky) was based on, was actually pregnant while writing the article, but it wasn't quite as intense as the show made it seem. Instead of turning in the story while in labor, Pressler submitted her draft when she was eight months pregnant.

"It was not a thing where there was a towel on the floor of the office, but they did tell me she was going to be pregnant," Pressler told Vulture. "I think Shonda liked the idea of a woman being pregnant, and it was an interesting thing to show that you can live your life while being pregnant."

4. Fiction: Pressler's baby nursery was not actually covered in a web of pics of Anna. While the "murder wall" was a nice visual touch for the show, Pressler said that she didn't actually pin up pictures of Anna and her friends in her baby's nursery. Instead, she kept up with all of the people involved in a much more tech-friendly way.

"To be clear, there wasn’t a murder wall. I had a spreadsheet. But that’s not very visual. That would have been Google Docs: The Show," she joked to Vulture.

5. Fact: Anna really knew Billy MacFarland (of Fyre Festival fame), and Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli. t's only fitting that a bunch of convicted scammers were all friends, right?

Anna actually roomed with Billy MacFarland while he was in the throes of planning the Fyre Festival, which was notoriously disastrous. Sorokin lived at the headquarters of Magnises, MacFarland's now-shuttered credit card company for four months in 2013. In a very Anna-like twist, she asked to stay for a few days as a favor, and ended up living in the headquarters for months without paying rent.

“She had Balenciaga bags and clothes everywhere," an anonymous source told Page Six in 2018. "The company wound up moving into a townhouse. That’s the only way they got her out! She had been there for four months!”

You might also remember the character from the dinner party who played unreleased Lil Wayne tracks for the group. He's also a real person Anna was friends with. Martin Shkreli, also known as the "Pharma Bro", is currently in prison for fraud after making the price of an anti-malaria drug (that was also used to treat HIV) skyrocket by more than 4,000%. And as for the Lil Wayne songs? According to Anna's friend, Neff Davis, who was at the party, Shkreli played them the album nearly six months before it was set to release. Neff recalled that when she tweeted about hearing the album, Anna got angry with her. "I wanted everybody to know that I heard this album that the world is waiting on! But Anna was pretty mad," she told Pressler. "She didn't come down to my desk for maybe three days."

6. Fiction: Anna didn't get any special treatment in prison during her interviews. The show depicts Anna frequently pushing Vivian to schedule media visits in order to get a private room and special treatment. Once Vivian follows through on Anna's request, they end up in a private room, complete with tea and comfier chairs. Sorokin herself debunked this, telling the New York Times that there "def was no tea" at Rikers. She added that when she was sent to prison in upstate New York, there was a cash-only coffee machine visitors were welcome to use. She made sure to clarify that "it doesn’t come in porcelain cups,” so that detail was just a little bit of TV magic. Pressler has also said that she never brought Anna a fresh supply of underwear while in prison, as seen in the show. 

7. Fact: Jessica Pressler loaned Anna clothes for her trial. While Pressler didn't actually cover the trial, she did lend Anna clothes for her time in court, as depicted on the show.  In the show, Vivian struggles with the decision to loan Anna clothes once her husband questions how invested in the case she is. Pressler said that the actual situation wasn't as emotionally charged as portrayed. "It was more like this kind of screwball sequence of ridiculousness," Pressler said. As discussed in the show, defendants have to wear civilian clothes during trial. After a series of issues with getting the outfits approved by the court, and Anna's refusal to wear some of the clothes, Anna's lawyer Todd Spodek (played by Arian Moayed)asked Pressler to go to H&M to pick up a new outfit for Anna to wear. "That sort of opened the door for me to fill the gap whenever there was a 'wardrobe malfunction,' as the prosecutor put it," Pressler told Vulture. "I did throw in one of my dresses at one point, but it was black. I did not feel like it was a conflict at all. I felt like, 'This will be a funny story someday.'"

8. Fiction: Jessica Pressler didn't really attempt to break into Anna's family home in Germany, although she did visit to research for a potential book. Jessica Pressler did go to Germany to scope out the truth about Anna's family life, but she didn't actually snoop through Anna's family's windows like Vivian Kent does in the show.  Pressler said she decided to go in order to figure out the truth after hearing so many different stories about Anna's past.   "There were a lot of conspiracy theories going on, and I started to have so much material, I thought I would do a book of some kind," she told Vulture. "So I went, but it was not quite like that. There was a lot more laughing."

Pressler's book, Bad Influence: Money, Lies, Power, and the World that Created Anna Delvey, is set to release in June.

10. Fiction: Pressler's editors weren't that stubborn about allowing her to write the story.

Pressler admits that while writing a long feature about Anna, who at the time, was only known to members of New York's elite social scene wasn't a given, the reaction from her editors' wasn't quite as extreme as it was portrayed on the show.

"I think the show bosses are a stand-in for patriarchal offices in general. But this is a thing where fact is braided with fiction," she told Vulture. "It was not a no-brainer to do an 8,000-word story about a non-famous person. It might be now. They did want me to write a Wall Street Me Too story, and I did react in pretty much exactly that way — though not as articulately. I did have to sell the story, but it was definitely not exactly the way it was on the show."

Like Vivian in the show, Pressler was trying to rebound from a previous workplace misstep. In a "Reasons to Love New York" list, Pressler interviewed a high school senior who claimed he made $72 million on the stock marker. This turned out to b

12. Fiction: Jessica Pressler didn't help Anna's lawyer, Todd Spodek, during the case, but they do know each other.

While the show portrays Vivian Kent helping Todd Spodek out with parts of the case by assisting with the boxes of discovery materials from the District Attorney's office, Spodek is adamant that no journalist helped him in any way while prepping for the trial.

However, Pressler and Spodek do actually know each other, and even went out on the couples' dinner that was seen on the show.

"I had a conversation with Todd Spodek’s real wife recently," Pressler told Vulture. "I told her there are things that are true, but there’s a scene where we all go to dinner and talk about Anna the whole time, you and Vivian’s husband are rolling your eyes, and obviously that never happened. And she’s like, 'Oh, but that did happen.' But the restaurant was different!"

13. Fact: Julia Garner nailed Anna's accent, and even Anna herself had to give Garner some credit.

A lot of Julia Garner's preparation for playing Anna involved getting the Russian/German combo accent down. Garner first had to learn how to layer a Russian accent with a German accent. She told BuzzFeed that she also modeled Anna's English off of the way Europeans speak English. 

After moving to New York, Anna definitely picked up quite a few American speech patterns, which Garner also worked into her dialect.

"I almost wanted it to be like, if she went to Europe, then to her European friends she sounds American. Then in America, she sounds European. It's a hybrid of different accents."

So what did Anna think of Garner's interpretation?

"I don't think it's off," Sorokin told Insider in a recent interview. "I think she kind of falls in and out of it. Some of it she gets right – but not everything. ... I don't feel like I sound like that. It's like when you hear yourself on TV and it's not really the voice you hear in your head when you speak." 

16 Real-Life Facts About Anna Delvey, In Case The Netflix Series Wasn't Wild Enough

Julia Garner Explains How She Came Up With Anna's Accent, Plus 26 More Facts From The Making Of "Inventing Anna"

Here's 29 Things The Real People Featured In "Inventing Anna" Have Said About The Series

[dinapaulson]

The Top Ten Times Bridgerton Titillated Me AKA Gave Life

After making haste to consume the series in a day, and the next rewatching Simon and Daphnes’ scenes only (highly recommend), at the crack of the following, I realized it was the magic of seemingly smaller moments, sometimes, in the form of behind-the-scenes and back story beauty, woven into the larger storyline expositions that really stayed with me—a storytelling feat Her Majesty, Shonda Rhimes, is known for. Here are the top ten times this happened, causing my cinephile soul considerable thought and feels. 

1. Simon’s bedside manner while Daphne is in labor

It struck me the first time while watching how—how shall I put it—calm Simon looked, while Daphne screamed and breathed her head off. No, calm is not quite the word—eerily still, without any emotion or exertion of his own. At first confounded by His Grace, I realized he was terrified; scarred and petrified into a place that had no emotion to rely upon. Would Daphne survive childbirth? Was he having an out-of-body experience, imagining, as I am sure he was told, his immense a**hole of a father pacing outside the room where the Duchess was giving birth to Simon, obsessed with the “outcome” and would not deign to be by her side, what that must have felt like, to be so cold and removed from life, feeling, humanity, and here Simon was, in perfect, firm love, at Daphne's side, being a whole part of their child’s birth? (When their son is born, his stock Simon-ness returns, as he, filled with emotion, gently holds their son from Daphne’s arms, then implies, impishly, because of the Bridgerton family tradition, their son’s name must begin with “A.”)

2. A chocolate will do just perfectly 

The perfection of friendship between Eloise and Penelope is well on display throughout the series. There was one moment that caught my breath for the sheer ease of what friendship is—truly relating without needing to fully understand the other but being, sitting, anyhow, in pure acceptance of the other and mutual situation. Such is what happens when Penelope tells Eloise, in gentle expository explosion, her path is and will be different, more difficult to navigate than hers, without having a sister who is a Duchess, and moreover, she thinks she wants a life different than the independent dream the two of them speak of. And, to that, Eloise offers a chocolate, and to that, Penelope's smile-inducing smile and simply reaching for one is friendship goals. 

3. “I beg your pardon?” 

As others have pointed out, there is plenty of hotness to Simon buttoning Daphne’s cuff as a clear metaphor for the sexual unbuttoning/buttoning to come. But, what gets me every time is Simon’s reaction to Daphne’s question, his face both gently confirming and sexily contorting, which seems to beg the idea that in a different house of language, not one for promenade but perhaps one a rake aka Regency f*ck boy would inhabit, this term had an, o, one might say, slightly less innocent meaning. 

4. The nighttime, swing chats between Eloise and Benedict

I dare say it was Eloise who checked her brother on his white man privilege that sent him (still) strolling to Henry Granville’s house to take a (completely protected, see white privilege) risk of himself as a potential new somebody, in this case, an artist. 

5. Were others hoping Henry and Benedict would have a go at it? 

I think I mistook their mutual intrigue for desire, though I dare say Benedict flinging himself with considerable umph into the ménage-a-trois with Madame Delacroix and her friend, may have been, in part, a turn-on from stumbling upon Henry with his love, Lord Willoughby, making love. I recognize this ponderance might be a stretch, but, if I may—remember that conversation A Happiest Season launched in queer Twitterverse about the likelihood, with multiple siblings, of at least one sibling being gay? Come on, there are eight of them! Tell me I am not the only queer fan who would love to see one Bridgerton explore a truthfully desired same-sex relationship on the show. 

6. “Simon” (**heart begins to ache**)

After Simon gives one of his best speeches, in episode five to the queen, in his and Daphne’s effort to persuade Her Majesty to assist them in getting a marriage license, so moved is Daphne by what he says, that she turns to him, as if no one else is in the room, with an emotive quiver, staring watery and straight into his eyes, and out comes a quaking: “Simon.” Indeed, Simon’s speech of the love from whom he cannot stay away nor let be the one who got away is the discursive, definitive foreplay to their physical consumption of each other. Later, he says quietly to her heart twisted back: “Everything I said to the queen was true.” 

7. “From the mornings you ease, to the evenings you quiet, to the dreams you inhabit, my thoughts of you never end...” 

Um. So, this is just one of the most perfect romantic things I have ever heard one human being utter to another. 

8. Also: this was a nearly all-female credited writer cast (with the exception of the series’ premiere and finale episodes, credited to showrunner Chris Van Dusen). I delightfully sighed as each woman writer’s name danced in Bridgerton font across my screen. What genius interplay of words that cut and bit and lobbed and heeled, then healed, revealed, and felt so completely—wonderful.  Here are the writing credits:

Janet Lin for episode 2, ”Shock and Delight”

Leila Cohan-Miccio for episode 3, ”The Art of the Swoon”

Abby McDonald for episode 4, “An Affair of Honor”

Joy C. Mitchell for episode 5, ”The Duke and I” Sarah Dollard for episode 6, ”Swish” Jay Ross and Abby McDonald for episode 7, “Oceans Apart” 

Additionally listed under writers are Jess Brownell as Executive Story Editor on “Shock and Delight” and “Diamond of the First Water,” Joy C. Mitchell also as Executive Story Editor on “Shock and Delight” and “Diamond of the First Water,” and Abby McDonald as Staff Writer on “Shock and Delight” and “Diamond of the First Water.” 

9. Simon goes down—a lot 

At least two times we know of, but we may assume more, that giving Her Grace pleasure between her legs is something that comes easily, perhaps even needily, to him. Just that. It is hot and wanting and you know, with various talk about men not wanting to go down on women, well, representation matters. 

10. Choosing present over past 

This is a Golden Age TV theme of late, strong in the final season of Jessica Jones and luscious The Queen’s Gambit, though, perhaps, choosing to be present is the overall life theme, always, and just manifests differently in all of our journeys. The fabulously eviscerate Lady Danbury says: “Pride, Your Grace: it will cost you everything and leave you with nothing.” What Simon gains by choosing to be in his present is not only the opportunity to feel and develop a love, and family, with Daphne, but he gives himself space—cleans out the leftovers, once and for all—to fully inhabit the now, which means anything could be ahead. 

[stephkaylor]

Gifs and Ships (ranking my ships using gifs...if you needed that explanation)

So I saw herosofmarvelanddc do this on my dash and they have literally no idea who I am so obviously didn’t tag me to do it too, but I’m gonna do it anyway. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Just so you all (does anyone even see my posts…?) know, I had to make a literal spreadsheet of my ships to accomplish this, just so I was sure I didn't miss any (41 ships across 25 fandoms, if anyone was wondering).  I don’t know what that says about me…. Anyway, enjoy!

1. First Ship - Piper and Leo from Charmed (the original series, not the remake)

I think it has to be this one; I started watching it in like...2000? So I was five years old...Is that too young to ship something? My poor parents must have been so confused...and probably still are.

2. First OTP - Damon and Elena from The Vampire Diaries

Probably them.  Not 100% sure...but it was definitely the first time I felt compelled to do literal battle against anyone who disagreed with me, so it seems fitting.

3. Current Fav Ship - Rose and Dimitri from Vampire Academy

I started rereading these books in the last few weeks because my country went back into lockdown, so I guess it’s them, by default. But it will probably be a different one next month.  That’s like asking to pick my favorite child.

4. Your Ship Since the First Minute - Chuck and Blair from Gossip Girl

This one basically punched me in the face in the first five minutes, and I could not have been happier about it.  

5. You Wish They Had Been Endgame - Caroline and Klaus from The Vampire Diaries/The Originals

I feel like they would've been endgame if ONE OF THEM didn't have to develop MORALS and nobly SACRIFICE himself even though he PROMISED to be her LAST LOVE. (I mean it was to save his daughter, or whatever, but I’m still upset about it) ((🤦🏻‍♀️shit, sorry, spoiler alert!))

6. You Wish They Had Been Canon - Clarke and Bellamy from The 100

I 100% do not understand why they were never canon...(*wink* see what I did there...?) ((also, fun fact: I took French in college and I named my dog Bellamy before I even watched this show, and now everyone thinks I named him after the character, but I DID NOT, I’m just a nerd 🙃))

7. Most of the Fandom Hates, but You Love - Clark and Lana from Smallville

I guess it’s them, by default.  I’m very easy to annoy when it comes to my tv shows and books, so if most of the audience doesn't like someone/something, I’ve probably been annoyed with it for a WHILE already.  I do remember, however, that a BUNCH of people hated Lana (I never really understood why) and didn't want her to be with Clark. There was just something about these two that I really enjoyed, and I could never get around to liking him and Lois, so....

8. You Don't Even Watch the Show, but You Ship Them Anyways - Claire and Jamie from Outlander

I think this might kind of be cheating.  I liked them when I saw people posting about them on my dash, but then I tried to watch the show and couldn't get into it, so does that count? (I ask my approximately 3 followers that definitely don’t care about the “rules” of this shipping list I was not even required to do...)

9. You Wish They Had a Different Storyline - Veronica and Logan from Veronica Mars

I get really annoyed when show-runners can't find a way to write someone off of a show without just killing them... (cough, Shonda Rhimes, cough).  I think it’s lazy and the characters deserve more.  

10. Fav Ship That is Endgame - Stiles and Lydia from Teen Wolf

Hands down, favorite ship that became canon. 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻 They are perfect for each other, and it was gratifying for the fans without coming across as too “fan-service-y”. (It’s actually one of my only ships that became canon and lasted until the end of the show, because I’m a masochist, I guess 😂)

Ok, so I spent entirely TOO LONG on this list, but here you go (again, I say to my approximately 3 followers 😘)

[thecrownnet]

From the period-specific tunes of “The Crown” to the surprising instrumental reworkings of modern pop hits in “Bridgerton,” this season’s Emmy contenders in music supervision showcase the growing field’s continued influence.

Alexandra Patsavas

“Bridgerton” may give veteran music supervisor Patsavas her best shot yet at an Emmy thanks to her clever use of chamber music-style covers of modern pop songs, which help trace the emotional journey of Daphne and Simon (Phoebe Dynevor and Regé-Jean Page) in Regency-era London.

The Vitamin String Quartet’s renditions of Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next,” Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You,” Shawn Mendes’ “In My Blood” and Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy,” along with Duomo’s cover of Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams,” sent streaming numbers into the stratosphere soon after the Netflix series debuted in December.

According to Patsavas, discussions about “how a period project could be relevant and inviting,” musically speaking , began months before shooting with producer Shonda Rhimes and series creator Chris Van Dusen. Says Patsavas: “How could the source [music] moments be seamless, presented with a wink and yet still feel appropriate to the beautiful costumes and production design? [Listeners] might sense that they knew the song, but it wouldn’t be an immediate recognition. You’d hear the lyrics in your head.”

Another cover was tailor-made by score composer Kris Bowers, playing piano, and cellist Hillary Smith, of Celeste’s “Strange,” for the couple making love for the first time. Not all the music is faux-classical. Many numbers are the real thing: selections by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Vivaldi and Chopin are also heard in the background of “Bridgerton.” Themes in Bowers’ dramatic underscore were inspired by Ravel piano pieces initially suggested by Van Dusen. Patsavas, who is now director, music creative/production for Netflix, is a trailblazer in the music supervision sector, with early credits on “Grey’s Anatomy” and the “Twilight” films. She has three Grammy nominations and eight more from the Guild of Music Supervisors but has never won a major industry honor.

Maggie Phillips

Kansas City in 1950 is the setting for the fourth season of “Fargo,” and that time and place influenced many of music supervisor Phillips’ choices of songs.

As Phillips explains, show creator Noah Hawley sends her (and composer Jeff Russo) his scripts six to eight months prior to shooting. “He writes with music in mind,” she says. “He gives us some initial jumping-off points, me for listening and Jeff for writing.” To wit: Hawley had Duke Ellington’s Jazz standard “Caravan” in mind for the opening of the season’s first episode, which chronicles the history of ethnic businessmen during the first half of the 20th century. Phillips licensed the Ellington tune as the centerpiece, and Russo adapted the music into different period-appropriate arrangements over the first 20 minutes.

Not all the music needed to be specific to that period, though. Jazzman Art Blakey’s “Moanin’” dates from 1959; Willie Dixon’s “Insane Asylum” from 1968; and Johnny Cash’s “What Is Man” from the 1970s. Says Phillips: “It’s important to capture the emotion.

Jeff Richmond

Richmond, composer-songwriter-music supervisor on “Girls5Eva,” is no stranger to coming up with songs in a hurry. “All those years of writing pastiches and jingles and musical numbers on ‘Saturday Night Live,’” he says. “The train is moving, write it quickly, get a demo out.”

The Peacock series imagines a short-lived ’90s girl group plotting a comeback after a rapper samples their one big hit. It fell to Richmond to re-create that decade’s “girl-power ballad” style for the song flashbacks as well as the new tunes to drive their hoped-for resurgence.

Creator Meredith Scardino’s early scripts had “pieces of songs,” and at first, Richmond says, “we didn’t necessarily know if they were going to be full-length.” “Dream Girlfriends” was designed as a big comeback number, but “Space Boys” was a comedy cutaway and “New York Lonely Boy” was a minute-long song playing in the mind of Dawn (Sara Bareilles).

Many were penned by Richmond and Scardino, but as Dawn begins to write her own material in the series, “we knew that the arc of the music should be a little more honest, sound a little more like Sara’s songs would sound.” So she began contributing too, and the finale song, “4 Stars,” is hers alone.

The pandemic complicated the process, as Richmond was writing and producing in his home studio, sending music to arranger-mixer-guitarist Hanan Rubinstein for improvement, the cast was often singing live during shooting (and tweaking the vocals during post-production), and Richmond was adding strings — all recorded remotely — for the final mix of songs and score. “Things got very hectic,” Richmond says.

Sarah Bridge

Season 4 of “The Crown,” which focuses on Princess Diana’s time in Buckingham Palace, featured more songs than in previous years. “It’s a natural progression as we step into the ’80s, but also the introduction of the younger generation of the royal family becoming center stage,” says music supervisor Bridge.

Photo: Ollie Upton/Netflix

The opening and closing of Episode 3, as Diana celebrates, and later regrets, her marriage to Prince Charles, is especially compelling for its use of Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen.” At first, Diana is euphoric, and she and her flatmates dance to it in a nightclub. Bridge persuaded Nicks to let the production access her raw vocals, heard a cappella under the end titles.

Says Bridge: “Hearing the power and fragility as well within it, it really reflected where Diana ends up. It felt a perfect end-credits moment, to leave it in a kind of isolated, lonely feeling, reflecting Diana’s emotion and where she is at the end of that episode. Stevie was really happy for us to feature it.” That same episode features Elton John’s “Song for Guy,” as Diana dances herself into a frenzy. Bridges re-recorded “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” for a scene where Charles and Diana are touring Australia, and gained permission from Andrew Lloyd Webber to re-record “All I Ask of You” from his “Phantom of the Opera” with a 28-piece orchestra for Episode 9, as Diana presents Charles with a tape of her performance of the song.

*Emmys Nominations-round voting begins on June 17, 2021.

[alcalavicci]

So there’s a really interesting interview with Deborah Pratt here. If you don’t want to pay for it, I’ll paste what I can below, but a few points first. 

Deborah says she doesn’t know where Dean is, and says she misses him. I guess she hasn’t had contact with him since he left for NZ? And with Russ Tamblyn saying Dean’s hanging in there in answer to a recent Twitter question, that brings up more questions about his condition.

Deborah claims she came up with the idea of Quantum Leap, which I’ve never seen come up before. Also Don wanted to send Sam home?? I feel like she’s misremembering a lot of details/making herself seem better than she is.

“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished… He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time tht his next leap will be the leap home…”

The premise of Quantum Leap succinctly and empathetically explained by a voice that spoke to viewers week to week, setting the scene at the opening of the episode. It is a voice that left an indelible print on the show, from its inception to its finale. This is the voice of its Head Writer. No, not Donald P. Bellisario, but a woman of color who was leaps ahead of her time – co-executive producer and uncredited co-creator, Deborah M. Pratt.

Deborah wrote or co-wrote 40 episodes of this sci-fi gem and her authorship of the show runs deep through its five seasons. Aside from the opening narration, Deborah is audible as the voice of Admiral Al Calavicci’s pocket computer, Ziggy. She also guest stars in the episode ‘A Portrait for Troian’ (S2, Ep11) as a grieving widow who hears the voice of her husband calling her.

Deeper still, Quantum Leap was a family affair. It was co-created with her husband at the time, Bellisario, and their daughter, also named Troian, appears as a little girl in ‘Another Mother’ (S2, Ep13, who can not only see Al, but also sees Sam as he really is, rather than as her recently divorced mom.

Prior to helming Quantum Leap, Deborah rose through the ranks as an actress, racing the screen in Happy Days, CHiPS, The Dean Martin Show and many more, and was also a writer on shows such as Airwolf and Magnum P.I. She is a five-time Emmy nominee, Golden Globe nominee and winner of countless other awards. She went on to produce CBS comedy cop show, Tequila and Bonetti, and then to co-create and produce the TV series adaptation of Sandra Bullock tech thriller, The Net. But Quantum Leap was Deborah’s brainchild – one which is emblazoned on the hearts of its faithful fans.

Deborah has since moved into directing, including on hit show Grey’s Anatomy (2020), but was generous with her time when spoke in late 2020 to leap back into the past.

It does seem that you were really ahead of your time as a female head writer and a showrunner in the ’90s, especially in science fiction TV. Was it hard for you to progress and to get Quantum Leap made?

“Usually women were relegated to comedy, very rarely was it drama or heavy drama. It’s changed, finally, with people like Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Bridgerton, Scandal). But yes, I was a true pioneer, even though I don’t have a ‘created by’ credit, it was a ‘co-created by’ show – with Don. I brought him the original concept, and we were married, and he said ‘Let me just run with this. I can get it made.’ And to his credit, he understands how to tell a story to the audience. He simplified it in a way that you could welcome Quantum Leap into the world. But it was still a tough show to sell.

“I think we went back three times to pitch it to the network. It was complicated to explain. Brandon Tartikoff [the executive] said ‘It’s a great idea – It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen on TV. Let me think about it.’ Then he asked us to come back, ‘I want you to pitch it to me like I’m six years old, then pitch it to me like I’m 80 years old’ and finally he took it. Then even after the show first aired, they decided to introduce that opening where I tell the story. That was created to explain every week to a new viewer what was going on and it worked really well.”

On rewatch now, the best part of three decades later, the show feels groundbreaking in terms of the subjects you cover. Did you feel like you were pushing the envelope?

“I feel we got to do so much on that show. I remember when I did ‘Black on White on Fire’ [S3, Ep7], the networks in the South in the United States wouldn’t air it because it was a black/white relationship. Even though there is no scene where you see a black person and a white person being intimate.

You saw Sam, who was white, and the girl who was white, but because he was playing someone who was black, it was an issue. They wouldn’t air the show in the South. This was around 1992.

“It was challenging for sure. I think we pushed the limits.

“The beauty of the show too, was that it was about hope, which I see so little of on television today. Everything’s so dark, so mean, so vicious, bloody – how many people can you kill? How mean can you make your lead characters and antiheroes. I think it’s why I didn’t work as much afterwards. A) I was a woman, and B) a black woman. There weren’t any black female executive producers that I knew of in drama. I got to do <em>The Net</em> because it had a female lead, but that was almost ten years after <em>Quantum Leap</em> was created. Any show I brought in that had a black lead was never bought, or a female lead, was never bought. 

“I remember I wrote a big action piece – like an Indiana Jones, but female-driven, feature film – and pitched it and the studio executive said, ‘Yeah, yeah, but when did the guy come and rescue her?’ And I said, ‘She doesn’t – she rescues him.’ The look on his face. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

The show darted around TV schedules, but the fans remained with it, and still to this day hold it dear to their hearts. Was that palpable at the time, or has that grown since?

“I think near the end of the first season, Harriet Margulies [Production Assistant on the show] found a chat room after an episode where people from across the country talked about it and it became the ‘watercooler.’ We were the first television show that had a chat room as a watercooler. Before that, it was literally you going into your office and standing around the watercooler and talking about movies or TV shows you were watching. Suddenly, it was online. So we started to go into the chat room and talk to people about what they liked and what they didn’t. Not necessarily telling them who we were, but that fan base is what kept us on the air because the network didn’t know what to do with us. There was no show like it, so they couldn’t like pair us with anybody.

“In the five years we were on, I think they moved the show six times and the fans still found it, they followed it, they watched it. That’s how we knew we had something unique and special. To this day, I’ll go into a meeting with a young executive who’ll go, ‘I have to tell you, I loved Quantum Leap. I used to watch it with my mom and dad’.”

Scott Bakula was such a great hero and heartthrob as Dr. Sam. What was he like to work with?

“He was so approachable, you know, in the sense that he had this great, easy acting style. He took chances and he was likeable – in a way that he could be a man’s man and a woman’s man at the same time. He’s really a brilliant actor. I am saddened by the fact that he has not had the opportunity to do movies in the way that could really have lifted his career. He’s had an incredibly successful television career. He’s a good actor. He’s a kind man. I’ve always admired him and felt like when we were working together, I had a friend that I loved to write for because he was always so giving and willing and wanting to take chances as an actor. So it was fun to go down to the trailer and say, ‘Guess what? You’re going to be pregnant this week’.

He does everything in the show from sing and dance to baseball, football, hopping over car bonnets to fights and martial arts. Did you know he had such a wide skill set from the outset, or did you write the challenges for him to rise to?

“I think we had conversations with him about that. I also knew that he had been on Broadway doing musicals. I knew he could sing and dance. When I wrote ‘Sea Bride’ [S2, Ep20], I wrote a tango number – that was unique for him. When Don knew that he could play the guitar… We asked Scott, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he said he wanted to do a musical and I think that’s how the ‘Catch a Falling Star’ episode [S2, Ep10] came about, which involves a performance of ‘Man of LaMancha’.”

Admiral Al Calavicci – he’s so much more than wisecracking and surface jokes or flirtation. There’s so much depth to his character. Was that fleshed out early on with an end to end journey for him in mind, or did his character evolve through the seasons?

“It was a little bit of both. Dean Stockwell had been on Broadway at five-years-old and had been a major child movie star. I remember when we wrote the show where Sam had the chance to save Al – ‘The Leap B4, Ep1] – he was so good in that. I’ll never forget how beautiful that was. And then in the very, very end, I love the fact that Sam did change history and Al ended up wih his beautiful wife with five kids.

“I remember once asking Dean, ‘Do you want us to write more drama for you? Big dramatic moments?’ And he said, ‘I want you to look at me right now. I want you to tell me what you see.’ And I said, ‘Well, your performance, the pain, fear and loss and all that, because you’re such an incredible actor.’ And he said ‘For me to perform that, I have to be it and live it. So don’t do too many.’ 

“He had that depth of acting talent. He is so good – Dean,  wherever you are, I love you. I miss you.”

The episodes that follow later in the seasons involving celebrities – Sam as Elvis, Dr. Ruth, or Lee Harvey Oswald, was that kind of a direction that you always foresaw? It feels like a sea change as the show progressed.

“The stories were designed, for the most part, to be so, so simple in that they were everyday stories. They weren’t change-the-world stories. I think the biggest one was Lee Harvey Oswald, and maybe the one involving Marilyn Monroe – those were with people that could have had a ripple effect.

“But there were other little kisses with history in the show, but they were very hard to do. They ran into a child version of Donald Trump in a taxi cab, [‘It’s A Wonderful Leap’ – S4, Ep18], then they ran into a little boy who is supposed to be Michael Jackson – Sam teaches him to moonwalk [‘Camikazi Kid’ – S1, Ep8]. The first time I did a kiss with history was ‘Star-Crossed’ [S1, Ep3] – Sam meets up with the woman that left him at the altar and they’re at the Watergate Hotel. That was fun stuff.”

Sam managed to awkwardly kiss lots of ladies in that sense of ‘Oh God, they’re going to kiss me and I’ve got to be this person, what am I supposed to do.’

“We never, ever really discussed what happened to Sam. We didn’t want him to be encumbered by a relationship. But I didn’t get to kiss him. My husband wouldn’t leave the set on the episode I was in!”

Your move into directing – from your TV drama Cora Unashamed back in 2000, to Grey’s Anatomy just last year. Is that something you wanted to do sooner? Were there barriers prohibiting you?

“I was supposed to direct on Quantum Leap four times. Every time it was coming up, something would happen. The only women who directed on the show were two black women – Debi Allen [Fame, Everybody Hate Chris, Jane the Virgin] and the other was a woman named Anita Addison. They each did two shows.

I said, ‘If I’m not doing this, I want black women.’ There were no other black women. And it was a fight. I tried to get black women directors on the show, but I could never get them past.

Then when I went to do The Net, the studio blocked it. I give huge amounts of credit for executive producing to Shonda Rhimes and what she has been able to do. She did what I thought I was going to be able to do. She’s so talented and I’m such a fan of her and her shows. I’m looking forward to what she’s going to do on Netflix. And it was an honour to do Grey’s Anatomy because I’m a fan of the show and I’m really grateful to have that opportunity.”

Has there been progress in terms of female directors and filmmakers being given opportunities?

“It’s very hard for women because there aren’t a lot of women executives at the studios. There are more now. And so there is an evolution that’s happening, but it still feels slow. There were shows run by people I gave opportunities to back in the day, but when I said, “hey, I want to direct on your show,” the response was, “oh, there’s too much machismo. There’s too many male hormones around here. They’ll eat you alive.” And I went, “no, they won’t, you’ll protect me. How about if I do my job?” And that was only last year. But there are more opportunities. There are more women making decisions, but we have to do more because women’s stories and women’s voices are more than half the population – we need to hear those stories. The historic ones as well as the contemporary ones.”

Is there a leap that was your favourite overall? That you feel made you made your mark with?

“’The Color of Truth’ [S1, Ep7] touched so many people and it opened a dialogue. I remember we got a letter from a teacher who said she brought the VHS in and she played it to her class, up until Jesse [Sam as an ageing black chauffeur in ’50s Deep South] goes and sits down at the counter in the restaurant. Then she stopped it and asked the students what they thought happened next. They thought that he just ordered lunch. And then she played the rest and that hostility and the animosity he endures and the fact that he had to get up and leave really incensed these children. They had never heard of or experienced racism. They didn’t want to believe that it really happened. This is how history gets buried and why television is so powerful and important. It opened a conversation that she could not have necessarily had in her classroom, according to her, had she not brought that show in to share with her students.

“We had another letter that was very moving, and I want to say it might’ve been ‘The Leap Home’ [S2, Ep1-2]. There was a couple who wrote and said they had a child that was on a cancer ward and every Thursday the whole ward would watch Quantum Leap. Their child was dying and they had kind of given up and it was just time to help that child transition out of this world. They watched the show and she said, ‘We realized we gave up hope. When we watched the show, we realized we didn’t have to give up hope and we wanted to write to you. It’s now six months later and the crisis has passed. The cancer is in remission. Our child is up and going back to school. And we just want to thank you for reminding us that hope has its own power’.”

Its power and poignancy has never diminished. Though the final episode, ‘Mirror Image’ (S5, Ep22), with the caption saying Sam doesn’t get to go home, does leave a sucker punch.

“That was our last fight. Don was going to send him home. And I said, ‘You can’t, you can’t send him home. If you ever, ever, which we’ve not ever been able to get Universal to let us do it, want to do a movie… If you want to keep the story going, you have to leave Sam out there in the hearts of people, leaving people thinking he could leap into their lives’. And at first Don said, ‘No, no, we need to bring him home’. And I said, ‘Do not bring him home. Or you will end the show. If you leave the hope out there, that Sam is out there and he could leap into your life and make a difference’. You keep the show alive in the hearts and the minds of the fans. And I think I was right.”

The ending was poetic for me as a viewer, but your point about Sam still being out there – Is there a leap back to the future for Quantum Leap?

“I started writing a project called <em>Time Child</em> about Sammy Jo Fuller. I actually wrote a trilogy in Season 5 where Sam leapt back three times into the same family and the second time he leapt he ended up in bed with this character and conceived a child. Then the third time he leapt in, he met her at 10 years old – a girl named Sammy Jo Fuller. So in my vision, Sammy Jo Fuller grows up. I actually have Al say, ‘Sammy is in the future with me. We’re trying to bring you home.’ That was my set-up way back in 1993, in Season 5, to say someday, Sammy Jo being his daughter might take over…. 

“This was the ’90s. Women heroes didn’t exist really – other than comic books – Wonder Woman was there, Super Girl was there. But I set it up in the show that Sammy Jo was going to bring him home. Sadly, I have not been able to get Don and the studio to give me the green light for Time Child. It might happen someday.”

Right now, it feels like we need more shows that offer hope. Is there a place for a reboot on streaming platforms?

“Universal keep saying they want to bring it back. They’re not going to give it up to Netflix because they have [US streaming service] Peacock now and still have NBC. I personally think it should be on a full blown network. The hard part would be that it would have to be recast if there was a female version using my character Sammy Jo Fuller. Or if they just redid the show, it would be interesting in the sense that there was such an innocence about the show. I still believe that there is an audience out there that wants it, that longs for looking at the past through the eyes of somebody in the present. But who would that person be if you did the show now, what are those eyes like? 

“We’re living in the time of COVID and suddenly you go back in time. How do you warn people that this is going to happen? How do you warn people about 9/11? How do you warn people about things in the future?

“I mean, one of the beauties of that innocence too, and I thought that was a great gift from Don to the concept, was that Sam’s memory as Swiss cheese – he didn’t remember things and that made it a lot easier, and Al was not allowed to tell him what was happening in the present. There’s a lot of detail woven into the mythology that allowed it to be innocent and in the moment of time travel. You didn’t have to drag the future back with you.”

Do you have an actress in mind to play Sammy Jo in a reboot?

“Oh my gosh, Jennifer Garner. I always felt she would be a great female Sam. She’s an ‘every woman.’ She’s funny. She does great drama. When I think of a female Sam or even Sammy Jo, I think Jennifer – in a heartbeat. She’s so great in Alias. That show just never stopped. You couldn’t take a breath. If I had to go younger, somebody that would have that kind of believable humour that you think could actually rescue you – maybe Jennifer Lawrence. She’s pretty formidable in that sense.”

“To bring Quantum Leap back. If they’re thinking about it, now’s the time to happen. Tell people to write to Universal! Write for the attention of Pearlena Igbokwe – if anyone can bring it back, she can do it. Write! Write to Pearlena – she’s the one that’ll make it happen. That’s how we stayed on the air for five and a half years. Fans unite and write!”

[okloveyoulani]

How Keeping Up With the Kardashians Changed My Life.

Yep, I said it.

And it's my truth.

As a tall brown mixed girl growing up in a predominantly white suburb of Missouri, I didn't see a lot of people around that looked like me. I stood out among the majority of white kids with Dooney and Bourke Bags and Nike Shox. AKA not me - a mixed Pacific Islander girl with a growth spurt that wouldn't stop.

All of my middle school crushes were into the Kate Uptons and Megan Fox's of the world - no one who I thought even slightly resembled me.

UNTIL...Kim Kardashian.

In 2007, Kim's sex tape leaked and her show Keeping Up with the Kardashians premiered. FINALLY, the guys I had crushes on were talking about someone mixed and with curves LIKE ME. Which in that time in middle school was a BIG DEAL, FAM. I mean Kim's not even Pacific Islander and arguably one of the most complex and problematic influences in culture. But hey, that's who I had at that time.

And let me tell you...her rising fame truly had an impact on me back then and sparked a whole wave of mixed brown girl pride for myself. Just seeing her on screen and hearing her get talked about in the hallways helped fuel my confidence simply because she was a closer shade of brown to me.

Bottomline: this moment when I first felt represented even in the slightest bit in mainstream entertainment speaks to a much larger issue about the severe lack of representation in entertainment.

It's alarming just how low the representation is of Black, Asian Pacific Islander, LatinX, and multicultural stories across film/TV - both in front of and behind the camera. It's scary looking back on the content I consumed growing up and how much of it were stories through the lens of a white male experience, resulting in us seeing their world reflected back to us instead of our own.

Driven by powerful filmmakers such as Issa Rae, Shonda Rhimes, Ava Duvernay, Mindy Kaling, and Lulu Wang, we're FINALLY seeing more diverse female leads and our experiences represented.

This is what I want to contribute to - this growing movement and renaissance of diverse storytelling. And in particular, share the Pacific Islander and mixed woman perspective. We have Moana which was beautiful (cried throughout the whole thing.) Now it's time to share not just our culture, but our modern day life experiences through the lens of our culture.

I want to simply exist, be who I am, and put myself out there so other Pacific Islanders and mixed women can see more worlds of possibility and opportunity for themselves. Especially those who grow up in environments with a severe lack of diversity - like my hometown in Missouri.

So that's why I'm here.

And why I'm on this exploration and committed to the IGNITE program. I'm wanting to learn how to overcome my fear of putting myself out there and write from what I know to develop more diverse and nuanced Pacific Islander stories.

So that other young mixed girls out there have more stories that represent them than I did. So they can see their world, culture, and community reflected back to them through powerful brown female leads <3

---

[dreamsofthescreen]

The Dust Of Bridgerton - Review

Based on Julia Quinn’s obsessively Jane Austen inspired nine novels, we as an audience step into a  world laced with gossip, love and historically inaccurate details.

Regé-Jean Page & Phoebe Dynevor in 'Bridgerton'

Having audiences and the online world jump from their seats at the news of yet another romantically colourful period drama, Netflix’s 2020 Christmas release set off on a high note. However, it may not have been enough satisfaction to cover all viewers, as the overzealous series that is Bridgerton can be perceived as a cute attempt to outline high-society London, rather than a sweepingly romantic love story. From overplayed themes, to the shallow one-liners, saturated costumes and quite frankly, some controversy in a modern series, we’re not so sure that this was a 2020 release. Granted, some of the artistic involvements are wonderfully intoxicating, creating interest and having it for sure be a visual spectacle. Though, this whirlwind historical insight by creator Shonda Rhimes seemed to be a whitewashed teen-drama, instead of a maturely topical period piece.    

Based on Julia Quinn’s obsessively Jane Austen inspired nine novels, we as an audience step into a  world laced with gossip, love and historically inaccurate details. Set in 1813 Regency London, Rhimes’ series is a period drama surrounding the esteemed Bridgerton family, and particularly Daphne Bridgerton, the eldest daughter of the four sisters. All surrounding the pursuit and importance of finding a suitor eligible for marriage at that time, Bridgerton is the glossed over, trivial version of Pride and Prejudice. Yet there certainly still is wit, charm, enchantment and change, grabbing our attention. It is these themes that we are known to love, rather making Rhimes’ series all the more predictable and repetitive. There is beauty and moments to remember throughout, yet all in all I felt as though I was watching a weak showcase of what a mock Baz Luhrmann and Wes Anderson collaboration that exerted a blinding pastel macaron palette might look like. There isn’t really any distinguishable, first class authentic directing or writing style. We have all seen it before, which is what makes it so popular. Bridgerton’s successful reception does not seem due to the fact that it is a beautifully great show, but because of the fact that it is something written knowing that audiences will not tire of yet another stylish, skinny period drama. We have seen many renditions of Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Madame Bovary over the years, making Rhimes’ series simply another period drama that rather latches onto others for inspiration, rather than being a strong standalone piece.

Where Downton Abbey meets Gossip Girl, some might say that this show bursts with fervour, yet it can be deemed as shallow in it’s character development and attempted strong plots. Some might say that Bridgerton has riveting grandeur, but it was films decades ago that originated it so, as we have already marvelled at the magic of the many renditions of Pride & Prejudice. And sure, there is drama, eroticism, as well as there are whispers in the streets filling the scenes of Rhimes’ take on a royal drama. But to have to create excitement by only overdoing sex and violence scenes like this doesn’t speak to highly of it’s quality. And it can be that this is what period dramas are about, yet Bridgerton’s over-embellishment of sex, drugs and rock & roll sometimes paints it out to be taking the easy way out; a cheaply written series by just landing on what is easily stimulating to audiences. As though you’re to a stand up only to have the comedian joke about porn and a night out he might’ve gone on, simply to quickly catch the audiences attention. It works, but does not hold as much substance as a joke with true wit, or in this case, a script with deep quality. The character arc’s end quickly, as does the mystery surrounding who ‘Gossip Girl’-like character Mrs Whistledown is. There isn’t much glory in the drama as there wasn’t enough of it. Yet, the focus on female empowerment and rather the female gaze was something that gets points for originality and  undertaking a modern stance during the Regency time period. 

Amongst the budding romance, glory and messy undertone of the series, the art department does deserve a pay raise, as there is no doubt that the costumes, set and overall work on Bridgerton make it all the more alluring. In saying alluring, it doesn’t necessary translate as the costumes being convincing. Yet the production and costume design is something that seems to define the esteemed privilege of the characters, as they dress in flashy tulle, silks and organza. Luxurious gardens, ostentatious palaces and velvet furnishings tie into the greatly pleasing aesthetics, as we are given the scoop on the Bridgerton’s drama’s, we also are taken in by their lavish lifestyles. Delicacy after delicacy in the ballroom scenes, as champagne towers flow & rich candles burn. Even in the overplayed sex scenes, velvet carpets and luxurious chaises sit on the backdrop. The combination of bountiful costumes and turns this show into an elevated treat for the eyes.

However beautiful, it can still be said that the costume & set design was just overpowering & seemed like a parody of other period drama’s aristocracy. The sickening yellow-green or floral orange gowns blinded, rather than astounded, as none of the costumes seemed entirely accurate. There are countless YouTube videos on the lack of historical accuracy in the dress. But not only are they inaccurate, they’re just unattractive. The completely saturated colours, ridiculous feathers and overall lack of style is another element that makes Bridgerton just look like a parody of that time period. Yet, cleverly enough, this may have been the point. By creating a romance-drama tale, we step into a fantasy world anyhow, so to change up the costuming can be seen as a good thing, as it does allow us to escape into it. We understand the era, but there is a twist in the aesthetic. If the intention was to accurately represent the time period, then it was far from a success. But if it was to create their own take on it, then it was an interesting move.

As much as Bridgerton may have looked beautiful, there were certainly bouts of controversy throughout, showing that it may not have been making the progressive impact that it may have hoped to. Rhimes’ twisted world is created & attempts to include actors from different backgrounds, but it rather plays out as just performative diversity. The only main characters of colour are a light-skinned bi-racial man & a snooty looking Asian queen. Obviously and unfortunately historically inaccurate to 1813 London whatsoever, this pursuit to be progressive was admirable, but rather stuck out like a sore thumb & did not blend naturally or seem at all organic. This is because it more so seemed that characters of colour were rather sprinkled in the background with no definitive lines or moments, making even the inclusion of them quite ironic, as it was not fully inclusive, for a show that may have claimed to be diverse. In saying this, of course, along with the blinding costumes and sometimes plastic-like set design, Rhimes’ had created a fantasy version of 1813 London, yet still was unable to do it justice. Colour and race were apart of Bridgerton, but only comfortably and what is suited to the media.

As stringed instrumentals playing Taylor Swift’s ‘Wildest Dreams’ or Billie Eilish’s ‘Bad Guy’, a make a modern take on classical music is made, this change much like the series itself. Whether or not Bridgerton was entirely convincing, it surely still was entertaining amongst all it’s inaccuracy or shallow writing. As to why it was renewed for three further seasons with Netflix, we are not sure. The colour and pompous nature of the series does grab our eye, but cannot hold it for too long, as we may see ourselves comparing it to any other period drama we previously loved. Shonda Rhimes’ ‘Bridgerton’ succeeded in becoming a household name on Netflix, thoroughly captivating and charming, it is a good teen-based and glossed over period piece. When it comes down to good filmmaking with Rhimes’ adaptation of the sprawling novels that Julia Quinn wrote, it really wasn’t all there.

Stars Out of Five: 2.5/5

visit at: dreamsofthescreen.com

[calzona-ga]

Since 2005, Shondaland has produced groundbreaking television. And over the course of 17 seasons, Grey’s Anatomy has made more than its fair share of bold choices. From the killing off of Patrick Dempsey’s beloved McDreamy to the still-controversial ghost-sex story line, the ABC series has seen, and done, it all. But perhaps no episode was riskier than turning the popular medical drama into a musical for “Song Beneath the Song,” the infamous season-7 hour in which a pregnant Callie (Sara Ramirez) gets badly injured in a car accident and, while her fellow doctors work to save her life, sees her hallucinatory self burst into song — with the rest of the characters quickly following suit.

Coming from the mind of series creator Shonda Rhimes, a vocal fan of both Broadway shows and TV musicals like Buffy’s “Once More, With Feeling,” the Grey’s musical episode was a monumental moment for the show and for television. Many viewers praised its audacity and swooned over the vocal chops of stars like Ramirez and Chandra Wilson.

“Song Beneath the Song” made for one of the most memorable hours of television, earning strong ratings and leading the soundtrack, particularly Ramirez’s show-stopping rendition of Brandi Carlile’s “The Story,” to Billboard success. A decade later, its impact is still growing, thanks in part to the countless teenage Grey’s fans who’ve only recently discovered the series via Netflix. Like the show itself, the musical has become an indelible part of TV history — and so, 10 years after its premiere in March 2011, we spoke to the episode’s cast and crew to get the story of how it came to be.

Featuring thoughts from Rhimes; writers, producers, and co-showrunners Tony Phelan and Joan Rater; and actors Wilson, Kevin McKidd, Jessica Capshaw, Kim Raver, and Eric Dane, this is the oral history of “Song Beneath the Song.”

Finding the Inspiration

Inspired by a 2008 benefit concert in which several stars of Grey’s and its spinoff show Private Practice performed songs to support out-of-work Hollywood workers during the 2007-2008 writers’ strike, Rhimes decided to turn her long-held desire to make a Grey’s musical episode into a reality.

Rhimes (series creator and writer): I remember thinking to myself at a certain point, I have this sort of murderers’ row of Broadway people. Like, Chandra had been on Broadway and singing; obviously, Sara Ramirez had won a Tony on Broadway [for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, in 2005], which is how I first met her; and then I knew that Kevin could sing. There were so many people in the show with beautiful voices. ... It felt like it was leaning in that direction in a good way.

Rater (writer, producer, and co-showrunner): The first iteration for, like, two days when we first started batting around the idea was that we would write original music. It was all gonna be original music. And then we quickly realized that a) who’s gonna write that music?, and b) no, it doesn’t feel like the right thing. And then Shonda, I think a day or two later, came in with the idea that we would use these iconic songs.

Wilson (Dr. Miranda Bailey): But the studio wasn’t quite on board with this whole idea.

Convincing a Skeptical Network

After coming up with the episode’s plot and deciding that the characters would sing classic songs from the Grey’s soundtrack, like Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” and the Fray’s “How to Save a Life,” Rhimes pitched the idea to the network — but, in a surprising first, she was told that they were going to pass.

Rhimes: By that point, I wasn’t getting notes on anything; nobody was saying no to me about anything. So it was really bizarre to me that there was all this resistance to doing a musical episode. And I remember somebody at the network saying, “Can’t you just do one of your love-triangle thingies again?” And I thought, my head’s gonna explode, because the show is not a bunch of “love-triangle thingies.” You guys have missed the point entirely. I felt like, no, every year of the show is a completely different show, and this year the show has a musical episode. And that’s the story.

McKidd (Dr. Owen Hunt): Tony, Joan, and Shonda basically said to us, “We are trying to convince Disney to give us actual money to do this musical episode, and we feel like we want to do a show-and-tell to show them what this musical episode could be. Are you guys willing to give your time to help us create this show-and-tell?” And we were like, “Yeah, of course.”

Wilson: So we gave them a concert. Sara, Kevin McKidd, and I, along with musicians, got together, and we performed this script that Shonda and Tony Phelan put together. Shonda did the narrating. And we went through what the entire episode would be, based on those iconic songs.

McKidd: I remember Sandra Oh came to the concert for the execs just to be moral support for us. And she became like our groupie — she would stand and cheer and whoop and holler in between all the songs.

Phelan (writer, producer, director, and co-showrunner): Once [the executives] saw it, and saw it could work, then they gave us the okay to do it.

Rhimes: I still feel like they thought we were crazy. But you couldn’t deny the talent in the room.

Getting the Cast on Board

Once the episode was greenlit, the team began the task of persuading a cast full of non-singers to simultaneously sing, act, and — in some cases — dance on screen.

Wilson: The offer was put out on the table from the beginning from Shonda — anybody that’s not interested in singing, you’re not required; you don’t have to do it.

Rater: I think Sandra from the beginning was like, nope.

Rhimes: She looked at me — it was her very deadpan face — and she was like, “I’m not singing.” And I was like, okay! If that’s not your thing, that is not your thing — that’s completely okay. And it didn’t feel like she was afraid to sing or push past this barrier. It felt like Cristina Yang doesn’t sing. And that made sense to me.

Rater: Ellen [Pompeo] has a great voice. She could’ve done more. ... Ellen was very gracious about, like, “I’ll doo-wop in the back; don’t worry about me. Let’s hear Chandra, let’s hear Sara, this is theirs.”

Capshaw (Dr. Arizona Robbins): In addition to Sara having this powerhouse voice, she was always very generous about others and never made anyone feel smaller because of her giant power. But singing with her was like, “Aw, man [laughs], how about you get this one? You got this leg of the race.”

Wilson: Probably the most frightened person was Kim Raver, bless her heart.

Raver (Dr. Teddy Altman): It was super-exciting and terrifying at the same time. We all love singing, but unless you’re Sara Ramirez or Chandra Wilson.

Dane (Dr. Mark Sloan): I don’t fancy myself a singer, so I said, “Shonda, in this particular episode, I want the least amount of lines.”

Rhimes: Eric Dane surprised me, because his voice had this lovely quality to it that was really nice.

Dane: I set her up for a catastrophe, so she had very low expectations.

Starting Rehearsals

For months leading up to the episode, the cast embarked on a grueling series of rehearsals and voice lessons, adding hours onto their already long daily schedules.

Capshaw: I had just had a baby, and I was really taking my life one day at a time. I knew it was going to be a big episode, but, timeliness-wise, it was a tough time. I think I was still breast-feeding.

Phelan: Usually in the writers’ room, you’ve got maybe six-to-eight weeks from the time you come up with an idea to the time that it’s shot. This we needed almost the entire season to plan for.

Raver: It was like riding a bike but then adding, like, six more wheels to it, and you had to kind of figure it out.

Capshaw: We were all bringing our A games. In normal days, it feels like there’s a familiarity, you can feel a little more casual, a little more off-the-cuff, but there was nothing off-the-cuff about this. It was all very high stakes because it was life or death, literally.

There were some silver linings, though.

Dane: We had these little earbuds in our ears, I guess like how you film musicals, so you can sync what you’re mouthing with the music in your ear. And so I went to the sound operator and said, “I can buy one of these earbuds, right? And I can create a content-receiver pack and connect it to an iPod and pipe music into this too theoretically, yes?” And he said, “Yeah, you could do that if you want to.” So I said, “So when I’m performing surgery in later episodes on this show, and I don’t have very many lines, theoretically I could be listening to music, and nobody would know?” And he said, “Yeah, theoretically, that would work.” So I had one made, and I shot many episodes in the surgical theater, sometimes with lines, listening to music, many times.

Filming the Episode

“Song Beneath the Song” revolved largely around the seriousness of Callie’s condition, but there were also some light moments, including a sexy, dance-filled take on “Running on Sunshine” featuring several of the show’s couples.

Capshaw: When Sara and I are in the car in the clouds — oh my god, I’ve never felt so goofy in my life [laughs].

Raver: Scott Foley [who played Teddy’s love interest Henry] and I had so much fun working together. He’s so funny, and so choreographing that dance singing number was really fun.

Wilson: Debbie Allen sent in Eartha Robinson, one of her choreographers from the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, who I knew from Fame, the television series. So this is who was coming in, teaching us how to twirl. And I was like, oh my god, I’m on Fame!

Early in the episode, McKidd’s Owen sing-shouts at his crew of doctors to “calm down” — a moment that, years later, became a widely shared meme for its over-the-top nature.

McKidd: In the scene, I think it was Kate Walsh — she’s brilliant; she’s a prankster — and Patrick and Eric Dane. And they were all arguing. And I’m sitting there and [the cameras] push in on me and I go, “Calm down.” And they couldn’t keep a straight face. Every time we did a take, they just would fall over laughing. And they were on camera giving me the eye line, and I had to sing this song seriously with those two actors just doubled over, like sidesplitting. It just tickled their funny bones so much. That was one of the hardest acting days of my life [laughs].

Capshaw: For sure, many, many, many shots were taken at Kevin McKidd for his “calm down” [laughs]. ... He really took on the rock-&-roll part of it.

McKidd: My daughter, who’s big on Twitter, she said that “calm down” thing’s like a serious meme thing now, which I guess is an honor. I don’t know.

The biggest moment of the hour came at the end, when Ramirez, a Tony winner for Spamalot, sang “The Story” as Callie fought for her life.

Phelan: When Sara came to Grey’s, she had this idea that she absolutely wanted to be known as an actress not a singer. And so for her first couple seasons on the show, she kind of left that side of her behind. Then, here was Shonda and I coming to her and saying, “No, we want to re-engage that part of you and put it on the show.” And so I think that she got nervous about that ... but to hear that amazing, magical voice come out of her ... that was the moment that was going to be able to sustain the music [of the whole episode].

Rhimes: When she sings “The Story,” I mean — I wrote the episode; I know what’s gonna happen. I’ve seen it a thousand times. It has nothing to do with me. But I always tear up a little bit because of her extraordinary voice and extraordinary performance.

Wilson: What a showcase it was for Sara Ramirez. I’m so glad that she got to share that part of herself with our audiences.

Reading Those Reviews

On March 31, 2011, the episode aired. While it garnered strong ratings, viewers’ reactions to “Song Beneath the Song” were mixed.

McKidd: I think we all went into it with our eyes open, and we knew there was gonna be mixed reviews. Because some people are gonna love it, and some people aren’t. But that shouldn’t stop people from taking a few risks in what we do, you know?

Rater: I remember being shocked that there were people who didn’t like it. I was like, come on!

Capshaw: It didn’t feel like [the reviews] were gonna affect anything either way. It wasn’t gonna be like, “Oh my gosh, that was too silly, and I’m never watching Grey’s again.” It had already found its place in people’s hearts.

Rhimes: I learned very quickly [on Grey’s] that if you’re gonna believe the good things people say about you, you have to believe the bad things people say. So there’s no point in paying attention to any of it. ... Nobody’s gonna like everything that you do.

Phelan: I know there are a lot of people who don’t like it, who felt like it bent the show too much, but it’s season 7 of a show, and if you’re not taking big swings when you’re on season 7 on a show, something’s wrong.

Creating a Legacy

Despite the critical reactions, the episode has developed something of a cult following over the years, thanks to live benefits and TikTok memes. A decade later, its creators all look back fondly on the hour and its impact.

Wilson: [The cast] watched it together, and I remember feeling like, wow, look at what we did!

Capshaw: When we showed up to do that benefit concert, I remember coming out onstage ... and being completely, completely overwhelmed with the people that responded to Arizona in that episode, and to the love story between Callie and Arizona.

Phelan: As a director, it was the biggest challenge of my career to do that, and it’s one of the things that I’m most proud of.

Raver: I’ll be in my car singing along, or at work if we’re in the hair-and-makeup trailer and we’re listening to [the soundtrack], it’s just an immediate flashback. It kind of feels like yesterday.

Wilson: The soundtrack is on my playlist on my phone [laughs]. So I will pop that thing out in a minute, because it’s just absolute happy memories.

Rater: If I’m cooking, that is what I put on. That’s what I tell Alexa to play for me.

Rhimes: I feel like that episode just always reminds me of having so much fun. That was what was really great. We had so much fun. And how much do you get to say that about just being at work?

Dane: As a cast, contrary to what some of the entertainment media might have speculated, we were all very close. We all spent a lot of time together, and a lot of that stuff felt really real to us. It was easy to access because of how we felt about each other off screen.

Raver: I just remember it being such an incredible experience, being able to work with all these incredibly talented actors and creators.

Rhimes: It’s right in my top 10 of episodes we’ve ever done.

Dane: I don’t particularly want to do it again, but I’m glad I did it.