A Shonda Story

Rhimes made Bridgerton a TV phenomenon but hadn't written its world. Queen Charlotte is all hers.

- By Zak Cheney-Rice

Of the television creators whose work possesses the authorial stamp and social heft needed to sustain an academic conference, and the fan devotion required to make them household names, Shonda Rhimes is in a tier with only Norman Lear. The Chicago screenwriter's first megahit, the long-running medical drama Grey's Anatomy, premiered in 2005, while her most obsessed-over follow-ups, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder, redefined appointment viewing for the Obama era. Each took audiences on a savvy, soapy ride through the work and sex lives of a refreshingly multiracial cast of horny careerists while hauling in millions of dollars and eyeballs for ABC. But after a public falling-out with her longtime creative home, Rhimes left network TV for Netflix in 2017. The diamond of that deal so far is an adaptation of the Julia Quinn period romance Bridgerton, now heading into its third season, a pandemic hit for Rhimes's Shondaland imprint but one that Rhimes herself had never actually written for. That changes with its new six-episode prequel, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, in which she uses the prickly and slightly unhinged monarch's origin tale to elaborate on one of the series' haziest questions: Why are there so many Black aristocrats in Regency-era England? It features all the Rhimes hallmarks, but the romantic fantasy of Queen Charlotte traverses somber new ground, balancing a sweeping view of history with a more intimate exploration of grief, regret, and painful decisions. (Bridgerton mainstays Lady Agatha Danbury and Lady Violet Bridgerton get thorough backstories here as well.) Rhimes sees the series as of a piece with Shondaland's bigger mission in TV: "I'm really not interested in doing something we've done before."