Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Was it when Olivia Pope beat vice-president and stroke survivor Andrew Nichols with a chair?
Or Papa Popes Twice as good speech?
Id like to go back to the beginning ofScandal.
Its as close as we come to having royalty.
I remember it so clearly.
If you all arent interested in that, then you dont need to make the show.
And then nobody said anything more.
I like to imagine that there was.
Honestly, thats the part about working where I work.
Nobody ever said that this was going to be a problem.
They did only give us seven episodes.
But other than that!
Matt Byrne, co-executive producer: And then 13 coming back in season two.
Rhimes: So lets do it all at once!
Right, thats right.
Guzman: And thats when the show gotcrazy.
What is your favorite murder onScandal?Rhimes: I dont think we have favorite murders!
My favorite murder is Andrew Nichols.
Rhimes: I think its everybodys favorite murder.
Van Dusen: Okay, done.
Rhimes: We all agree on that one.
The scandal was to not let the shareholders of his big company know that he was losing his mind.
It was so fun to write!
We laughed a lot about that.
Rhimes: Blood was pouring out and he wasnt dead.
Its an important story and it found its time.
Rhimes: Literally he pitched it every year, but it was perfectly timed.
Rhimes: The heads in my office!
Michelle Lirtzman, executive story editor: My favorite murder was Lena Dunham.
Rhimes: We didnt kill Lena.
Guzman: Kinky Sue.
Lets talk about everyones favorite murder: when Olivia beats Andrew Nichols to death with a chair.
Matt pitched him ringing a bell, answering questions to the press.
That was the initial idea.
The idea ballooned from there.
Youll hear these crazy pitches and itll be like, She beats Andrew Nichols to death with a chair!
and sometimes Ill be like, Thats the worst thing I ever heard.
and sometimes Ill be like, This is the greatest idea ever!
This was one of those greatest ideas ever.
I dont remember when it came.
But we had like, an hour to come up with something else.
Then Heather [Mitchell] said, What if she eats her wrists?
McGhee: Yeah,Scandalpace.
We have to get this done.
Everything we do has to be born out of character.
And once we got the right character thing, it was the perfect thing to do.
Until then, it was just a plot point.
That was true of anything.
She was the sun of the show.
If she wasnt involved with the story, the story lost interest and died.
Rhimes: It always did, yeah.
Fish: Also, season one ended with Who is Quinn Perkins?
and we went into season two having to answer that question.
Who is Quinn Perkins?
Were so excited that youre coming.
What were some of the pitches?Rhimes: I dont even remember them at this point.
Byrne: She was the Lindbergh baby.
Rhimes: Oh yeah!
She was the Lindbergh baby for a little while.
Brownell: Jacqueline Hornbacher!
Rhimes: That was her name!
I won that argument.
Theyre both interesting stories to tell, but that was a huge debate between us.
We were back and forth.
At one point we were ending the episode with Olivia back in her bed.
Did we end it with her in the bed?
Mohamed: We talked about it.
McGhee: We were going that way, and we ended it with the body-bag shot of the kid.
That was Matt very clearly saying, We need it to end on the kid.
It ended up being a great choice to go out on the kid and not Olivia.
That she would never tell Fitz?Rhimes: Oh, that discussion.
There was a lot of discussion about that.
I was like, Why do they have to talk about it?
McGhee: We were all, minus maybe one person, onboard with the whole thing!
She can speak for herself if she wants!
Mohamed: Im an Olitz person!
Rhimes: Its good for America, I suppose.
Mohamed: I have like, one season of being an Olake person, but then I went back.
Rhimes: Its exhausting.
Mohamed: I know.
I get really invested.
But look, I have no comment on that.
Rhimes: It broke her dreams [when Olivia didnt tell Fitz].
Mohamed: Its fine, I was fine.
Intrinsically, it didnt make any sense that there would be a big story about it.
That wasnt the arc of what was happening.
It was about Olivia getting the hell out of there.
It wasnt some act she did that had anything to do with him, or ended up hurting him.
It was about her and her act of self-preservation.
Were not going to tell you how to do it, you dont tell us how to write it.
Byrne: Oftentimes, we feed off of the character and how theyre playing stuff.
Jake is an example of that.
I watched a take of something and came back and was like,I figured out something.
It wasnt that I decided Cyruswouldbe gay, I decided that Cyruswasgay.
It was like, Oh, Jeffreys playing Cyrus as gay.
The last election and the current administration feels like a TV show.
And so we switched our direction a little bit because we didnt have to make the story crazy.
I dont think that was ever our goal.
It became about what happens when corruption starts to eat away at you.
Theres a Times Up line in one …Rhimes: That came before.
I was watching and went, Wow, he said times up.
I thought that was referential.Rhimes: No!
Papa Pope says, Times up!
I was watching, and I went, Oh, my God!
Mohamed: These are all written before.
Rhimes: Mellie [saying times up] was after.
Well, the Russian hookers peeing on someone that was a reference, right?Rhimes: Yeah.
Fish: There have been many cases where weve predicted the future accidentally on the show.
Shortly thereafter, it came out that that was, in fact, happening in our country.
Mohamed: Also the Ohio voting machines that had been tampered with.
We completely made that up …
Rhimes: We didnt make it up.
Mohamed: Not make it up, but the fact that it was Ohio …
The problem was that the craziness was actually happening.
I remember writing one about Hal [Rimbeau] and Mellie.
Mellie was seducing Hal, a secret service agent, to kill … And hes trembling, like, totally erect, hard as a rock!
Rhimes: Why, Zahir?
McGhee: Its key to the story!
McGhee: We wrote that.
We read it at the table, but we didnt do it.
We kept threatening to do it later.
It was very emotional.
I was like, Lets do a B613 show!
For like ten minutes, and then ten minutes went away.
And Shonda would say, Stop trying to kill X!
Stop trying to kill Y!
But we would always take a stab at it.
Who were you trying to kill?Rhimes: They wanted to kill Tom so much.
Fish: Weve killed him on paper a thousand times.
Rhimes: I would go, Why?
Because I loved Tom!
He was crazy in all the right ways and he would say these insane things.
Talk about a co-star who came on and then did all kinds of amazing stuff.
Then they would be like, And now Toms dead!
Tom was so beloved and special to me!
I was like, We are never killing Tom!
And it never happened.
Lirtzman: We all loved him.
But hes just so crazy and hes killed so many people.
Rhimes: Storywise it always made sense.
I just irrationally was like, He cannot die.
Fish: Which is why in the finale, Olivia ends up with Tom.
I think we got away with that.
Trying to back-engineer what exactly was going on in that moment.
How do you calibrate what the right amount of wildness is?Rhimes: It just feels right.
Were trying to tell stories, and were trying to do the best we can.
and you go to each table read and youre like, Wow, that really played.
Its like, three really great episodes.
Looking back, I cant tell you how those runs came together, but it would just happen organically.
I cant really remember anything!
Rhimes: Not thin air, though.
McGhee: No, Im basically saying that anyone could have done it.
Race seems to become more explicit as the show goes on.
I have to remind you who you were.
He had raised a kid who was sort of useless in this conversation.
McGhee: It took another step when Marcus in the lawn chair called her out as a contemporary.
I am really down here doing the dirty work that youre unwilling to do.
It was very interesting.
Rhimes: We had little markers.
So he became a Republican.
It gave us the chance to have a lot of conversations.
Rhimes: Yeah, once its a woman it was a whole other story.
Nardini: And if I can just add, theres something hotter about Olivia controlling a Republican.
Theres just something hotter about using that ticket to power and finding ways to use it for good.
Rhimes: I also felt like that is whats interesting about it.
One of the reasons why he was so progressive was because she made him that way.
Who was the most fun to write for?Rhimes: Everybody would have a different answer.
The dinosaur stuff and the paleontologist stuff.
A lot of monologues.
Mohamed: Charlies fun to write for because he has a fun, comedic wit.
What do you think the traits are of aScandalmonologue?Rhimes: Oh, I dont think that exists.
It depends on who youre writing for.
Thats the kind of monologue that was so badass and amazing and feminist and strong.
That only works if delivered by Joe Morton.
Guzman: But heres the thing: When youre writing those monologues, youre hearing those voices.
Like, youre writing it for Joe.
You know where Jeff Perry (Cyrus) is going to pick his pauses.
Sometimes youre very wrong, but at least in your head, youre designing it that way.
I was so blown away by that.
Was that the first monster monologue on the show?
Rhimes: That was the first big one.
Its the one where he talks about, Youre going to take the revolver and blow your brains out.
Fish: I loved the audacity of having a three-page monologue on a TV show.
Then here is this character giving a three-page monologue and it blows your socks off.
And this whole thing has this Gothic, operatic quality to it and the actors embrace it.
That just makes it such a joy.
I came in in season two, and I was a little bit intimidated by peoples work.
Its like, I cant deliver this outline or this scene in a way where it just makes sense.
I want to do good for Shonda, and I want to impress the other people.
So Ive learned its about making it as interesting as possible.
Dont focus so much on the logic or what has to happen.
Just make it really, really good, and it has a chance to sing on screen.
So the show generally seems to be more team Fitz.Rhimes: What?
Is there a split in the room?Rhimes: We are all team Olivia.
We are not team Fitz or team Jake.
This is not a romance show.
Mohamed: I agree!
I am team Olivia!
But I do love the romance.
Im a sucker for the romance, but I will flip.
If Fitz isnt acting right, then he has to go.
But how we got there was going to be interesting.
I and some other people were very interested in, Just be bad.
In the finale of season six, the Luna Vargas business, Im like, Yes.
Let me just see you be evil.
Rhimes: The Oval has always corrupted, absolutely, no matter what.
We always say that to be in the Oval is the center of corruption.
No matter whos there, the goal is to get through it without being corrupted.
Byrne: The closer you get to it the worse you become.
Thats true of the world, as someone who was in that world.
People really do only think about power in Washington.
They only think about themselves and politics.
Its always first and foremost in everyones mind.
Thats the truth I tried to carry into this show from the real world.
Do you feel like that is the political philosophy of the show?Rhimes: I dont know.
Yeah, the pursuit of the Oval, which is the seat of power, can be absolutely corrupting.
For most people it is.
Is it going to be for Mellie?
Do you think theres a line of irredeemability you’re free to cross?Rhimes: No.
I think anybody can do anything and it’s possible for you to still love and forgive them.
Thats whats interesting about writing characters, if you do it right.
you’re able to still love them if they do it right.
What do you think the legacy of this show is?Rhimes: Legacy.
What is a legacy?
Its planting seeds in a garden well never get tosee!I dont know somebody?
Im still editing the finale, so I cant.
McGhee: Its hard to say legacy.
There was a fear that if youre not a white male lead, you couldnt do anything.
The character had to be precious and perfect, and they dont have to be.
Weve seen more characters like that, and the audience has followed.
Byrne: I think the legacy is in the finale.
Everyone: Oh yes, yes.
Rhimes: Well done!
