5 Facts You Didn’t Know About Badass Producer Shonda Rhimes

Thank God it’s Thursday? Thank God for Shonda.

Shonda Rhimes’ TV shows, such as “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal,” have earned her amazing reviews and popularity amongst viewers. But before these hit shows, she also was a writer for movies, such as “The Princess Diary 2” and Britney Spear’s “CrossRoads.”

Overall, though, she’s written and produced scenes that will make you cry happy and sad tears. That’s a gift.

And as much as you Shondaland fans may feel like you know here, there is still so much to know about this talented Woman That Does. So, we decided to do some digging. Here are our favorite facts about the “How to Get Away With Murder” producer.

1 Shonda Rhimes is one smart cookie.

Rhimes comes from a lineage of educators, with her mother being a university administrator and her father being a junior college professor. Both her mother and father raised six children on their own while trying to further themselves in education.

Now let me hear your excuse on why you failed a class.

When Rhimes took her story-telling skills to Dartmouth College to study English and Film, she didn’t limit herself to writing. She wanted to dabble in acting, too, just in case she wanted to add golden globe actress to the various awards she would win as a writer.

In the end, Rhimes followed her father’s footsteps by attending the University of Southern California to study screenwriting, where she was later hired as an intern at Denzel Washington’s production company.

2 She wrote one of Halle Barry’s first starring roles.

Halle Barry was an up and coming actress in the ’90s, and she received one of her starring roles in the 1999 TV movie entitled “Introducing Dorthy Dandridge.” Dorthy Dandridge was one of the first African American actresses to be nominated for a film award.

And for Rhimes, this was one of her first writing gigs. That’s one heck of a first gig, Shonda. Pretty impressive stuff.

3 She doesn’t want to have nice daughters.

Shonda Rhimes doesn’t want your typical “let’s sit and chat over tea” daughters. She wants to raise some rebels. In an interview with Good Housekeeping, she revealed that she doesn’t want her daughters to be easily manipulated.

Currently, Rhimes is the mother of three adopted daughters, Harper, Emerson and Beckett.

“They couldn’t be more different from one another, but they’re all stubborn — and I mean that in the best way. No one will ever take advantage of them,” she said. “They will always go their own way because they have decided they’re going to. That was definitely like me as a kid. It’s so much better than having a nice, pliable child who can be easily manipulated. I don’t want to have a nice girl. I’d rather have a stubborn girl.

Talk about #girlpower.

4 Rhimes was named one of TIME’s Most Influential People

In the TIME interview, Rhimes says that TV has come a long way since she was little. She said that not too many people on television “looked” like her. She wanted to change that. And she did.

The star of Rhimes’s “Scandal,” Kerry Washington, says that “Shonda allows for more people than ever before to see themselves and feel as though the world sees them too.”

5 She has built herself one successful empire.

Shonda Rhimes is worth millions of dollars, as expected..

We’re not too surprised, though, because Rhimes’s “Grey’s Anatomy” rakes in $300 million dollars in cold, hard cash each season. And that’s just one of her shows. In addition, Rhimes has invested in a television company called “ShondaLand.”

Thanks to these investments and projects, Rhimes’s net worth is estimated to be $120 million dollars. But of course, for a woman paving the way for other women of color in Hollywood, we actually expect that number to grow in the coming years.

Until then, though, we will patiently wait for Shonda to create more shows with epic plot twists.