'It's Not the Scene, It's the People in the Scene' – Shonda Rhimes Calls Out Racism, Homophobia in TV Censorship

It may seem like you can show just about anything on TV now. But that – like the idea that America is in a "post-racial" era, or that LGBTQ+ people have won fully equal status and don't need to fight that fight anymore – is the thinnest of illusions.

Prolific TV producer Shonda Rhimes proved the point with a short but masterful explanation to Entertainment Weekly of how racism and homophobia continue to exert their influence on TV's standards and practices, and how she outmaneuvered network censors on shows like "Scandal" and "How to Get Away with Murder."

It all started with a sex scene depicting heterosexual romance between two white people on Rhimes' show "Grey's Anatomy," EW said.

"At the end of the medical drama's second season, Derek (Patrick Dempsey) and Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) finally sleep together, breaking a season's worth of tension," the entertainment news outlet recounted.

The scene sailed past network censors, EW explained. When it came time for an interracial love scene on "Scandal" between white actor Tony Goldwyn and Black actor Kerry Washington, Rhimes had the foresight to ensure that the scene echoed the one on "Grey's Anatomy," with each beat and each shot in the scene faithfully retracing the earlier depiction of a romantic encounter.

"As Rhimes suspected, the... love scene initially got some pushback from network standards," EW recounted.

"The standards and practices said, 'You can't do this,'" the prolific producer said – even though the two scenes were identically constructed for shows airing on the same network, ABC.

"It becomes very clear when you do that, that it's not the scene you're objecting to," Rhimes added. "It's the people in the scene you're objecting to."

Faced with the fact that a scene with two white actors had been approved, only for an identically composed scene with actors of different ethnicities to be challenged, the naysayers surrendered.

But ABC's standards and practices came roaring back, shears in hand, when another Rhimes-produced series, "How to Get Away with Murder," dared to show a love scene between two men, Conrad Ricamora and Jack Falahee.

Rhimes had anticipated the response once again. "Pete Novak, the creator [of 'How to Get Away with Murder'] wanted to do a gay love scene, and I was like, 'Just make sure you shoot it shot for shot with Olivia and Fitz and Meredith and Derek,'" Rhimes recollected.

"When [Novak] replicated the way that both the 'Grey's' and 'Scandal' scenes were shot, as Rhimes says, 'That meant that nobody could say that it was too much or it was wrong, or it was any of those things,'" EW relayed.

Not without shouting the quiet part out loud, anyway.

The gay love scene was more than a case in point, though. It was the start of an enduring TV romance, EW noted, "probably in part because Novak listened to Rhimes' advice on how to shoot that first love scene."