Shonda Rhimes Says She Doesn’t Watch Television or Track Ratings

“I’m not watching television. And I know that’s —” “What?” “Crazy. Yeah.” “Netflix is not going to that.” “I mean, I encourage everyone to watch Netflix, obviously, but I have not watched like narrative programming in a while. I don’t get any pushback at Netflix, obviously, because they’re always pushing boundaries. Network television is just a very different thing. You know, they have standards and practices. And I had many an interesting conversation about the stories that we were telling. But I also think that part of the responsibility that comes with not having failure, not having faced it, is to remember that if there are no fences, that doesn’t mean, you should do everything just because you can. You absolutely can’t work that way. You can’t because they’re going to let you just do whatever you want. I feel like the quality control is important. I only make shows that I’m obsessed with and I want to watch, and that’s it. I hadn’t paid attention to the ratings in about 10 years, really, and I think that that’s healthy. There’s something about living and dying by those numbers that’s a little exhausting.”