Bizarre Pushback Shonda Rhimes Got About The Grey's Anatomy Pilot
Shonda Rhimes is an American writer and producer and is best known for her role in creating and producing one of the most popular medical dramas on TV, Grey's Anatomy.
For 19 seasons and over 400 episodes, fans have followed the lives of various doctors and surgeons within Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, and Grey's Anatomy has won various awards. Although the show is regarded as a massive success today, there were many obstacles in the beginning for Shonda.
When ABC executives saw the pilot episode, they raised several concerns, their biggest issue was with the main character, Meredith Grey.
Meredith is introduced in the first episode and executives found her privileged and self-absorbed, her character was struggling to live in the shadow of her mother, who was a famous surgeon, and because of this was sarcastic, dark, and distant, unwilling to connect with fellow residents. If Meredith's turmoils weren't bad enough to raise concerns, what her character does next in the episode had executives up in arms.
The group of ABC executives had an issue with Meredith sleeping with a stranger the day before she started her job. The group in charge was made up of mostly older men and couldn't accept the concept. Luckily, Shonda was able to convince them not to cut the part out, and the pilot episode of Grey's Anatomy aired on March 27th, 2005.
Fans of the show today will remember the man that Meredith slept with in the first episode because he eventually became her husband, but not before some steamy hookups, shocking plot twists, and a fair amount of breakups between the two.
Meredith met Derek Shepherd at a bar, and the pair ended up having a one-night stand. Meredith was content with the idea that she would never have to see him again, but then he turned up at the same hospital she was working at; he had a job there too. If that wasn't a twist enough, Derek turns out to be married to Addison. Cue the drama.
No matter how the pilot episode played out, Meredith and Derek were always going to end up together, but fans are grateful that Shonda was able to fight for what she believed in and convince ABC's executives to air the first episode as it was. It just shows that Grey has pushed boundaries and addressed important and or sensitive issues from the start, from starting something as trivial as Meredith having a one-night stand with a stranger to making statements about real-world problems, and this is all thanks to Shonda Rhimes.