Shonda Rhimes Recalls Why a "Room Full of Old Men" Told Her No One Would Watch Grey's Anatomy

Grey's Anatomy almost needed of a resuscitation before it premiered.

The longtime medical drama's creator Shonda Rhimes recently recalled how the show almost never made it to the small screen at all due to the opposition she received from network executives.

"It feels really obvious now, I think, but at the time, you have to remember, there had never been a show in which there was a lead character who owned her sexuality on network television," Rhimes recalled during a preview of Oct. 25's episode of theSkimm's 9 to 5ish podcast, which was exclusively shared with E! News. "I remember getting called into a room full of old men to tell me that the show was a problem, because nobody was gonna watch a show about a woman who would sleep with a man the night before her first day of work, and they were dead serious."

In response to the execs saying there wasn't anything "relatable" about Grey's Anatomy, Rhimes' creative partner, Betsy Beers, blurted out the real reason behind Meredith's (Ellen Pompeo) decision to hook up with Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) after her first day at Grey Sloan.

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"Shonda looked like she wanted to throw up, which was the appropriate response to this, but I couldn't help it, and I said, 'Oh, that's me. I did that. That's absolutely me,'" she recounted. "I remember I was saying that and I just blurted it out, because it was true."

And although the story proved the network execs wrong, Rhimes remembers it wasn't exactly what they wanted to hear.

"They could not get out of that room fast enough," she said. "They didn't know what to do. They were like, 'These are these kinds of women we don't like.'"

Elsewhere in the podcast, Rhimes and Beers discuss Bridgerton, which show's ending they'd most like to redo, and their best career advice for women.

Their episode of TheSkimm's 9 to 5ish podcast goes live at 9 pm ET on Oct. 25. You can hear it anywhere you listen to podcasts.

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