Year of Yes Read online

  I would believe and I would say yes.

  I told myself that and then I ate that whole cake and drank four mimosas while trying to believe.

  yesyesyes

  A week later, the phone rings at my Shondaland office. President Hanlon from Dartmouth College is calling. College presidents do not make it a habit to telephone me. I have met President Hanlon, a very nice man, exactly once. Nevertheless, here he is, President Hanlon of Dartmouth College, on my phone. Calling. He has a question. He wants to know if I will give the commencement speech at the college’s graduation in June.

  A twenty-minute speech. In front of about ten thousand people.

  Ummm.

  Universe?

  Are you freaking kidding me?

  There is an actual full minute that occurs on that phone call in which no air moves in or out of my lungs. President Hanlon may or may not be speaking. I do not know because the roar in my ears is making it impossible for me to hear.

  Say yes to everything for a year.

  This is it. It’s happening. And now that it is here, saying yes stops being just a vague idea. Now the reality of what I am embarking upon sends my brain thundering around inside of my skull.

  Say yes?

  There’s no way to plan. There’s no way to hide. There’s no way to control this. Not if I am saying yes to everything.

  Yes to everything scary.

  Yes to everything that takes me out of my comfort zone.

  Yes to everything that feels like it might be crazy.

  Yes to everything that feels out of character.

  Yes to everything that feels goofy.

  Yes to everything.

  Everything.

  Say yes.

  Yes.

  Speak. Speak NOW.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes.”

  President Hanlon and I chat some more. I think it’s pleasant. I think I’m calm. I really have no idea. I am focused on breathing in and out. On lowering the roar I hear. When I hang up the phone, I consider what I’ve done.

  Speech. Commencement. Ten thousand people.

  I input the date into my calendar.

  June 8, 2014.

  June.

  That’s about six months away. Six months is pretty far off.

  Six months is a lifetime.

  Okay. I shrug and go back to writing my Grey’s Anatomy script notes.

  Relieved. Not a big deal. I’ll think about it later.

  I file it away in the back of my brain and forget about it. I forget about it for five and a half months. You’d think that would be bad, given the giant speech I have to write. But instead, it turns out to be lucky. It turns out that I have other hurdles.

  The Dartmouth commencement speech is technically my first yes.

  Really, though?

  The Dartmouth commencement speech is the first thing I say yes to. But it’s not the first yes that I actually have to DO.

  That’s a different yes. And that yes? Turned out to be something much more terrifying.

  Hello, Jimmy Kimmel.

  4

  Yes to the Sun

  “They want you to be on Kimmel.”

  My publicist, Chris DiIorio, is talking to me.

  Yeah, I have a publicist. A publicist sounds like an “I’m on the cover of Vogue” kind of thing to have. The kind of thing you have if you are luminous like Jennifer Lawrence or stop traffic every time you move like Lupita Nyong’o.

  As I write this, my hair is standing straight up on my head because it’s been a few days since I combed it and I’m wearing a pair of pajamas where the top and bottom do not match. They’re not even the same fabric. The bottoms are silky, the top is stretch knit. There’s a hole in the knee of the pajamas. Hello, Vogue. Yeah, I have a publicist.

  When I first got a publicist, I told him and his team that my main reason for having a publicist was so that I never ever had to do any publicity. Everyone thought this was a joke. I was not joking.

  It seems, being that everyone around me knows that I am awkward, introverted and visibly uncomfortable when meeting new people, that it would be kinda obvious that I would be panicked at the thought of standing on a stage talking to an audience, having my photo taken by a horde of photographers, being on TV, making public appearances of any kind, really.

  You’d get that it would probably not be my favorite thing, right? You would, gentle reader, wouldn’t you?

  That is because you don’t work in Hollywood.

  In Hollywood, it is assumed that a person would be excited about a spotlight shining right on their face while they sat on a toilet on live TV.

  I joke, right? No, still not joking.

  Seriously. I think, given the chance, there are plenty of people in Hollywood who would LINE UP to do it. They’d line up for a casting session that read “PERSON ON TOILET.”

  Why? WHY?

  For the exposure. For the endorsement opportunity.

  “I could have my own line of toilets, you never know,” they’d say, and plop right down on that porcelain throne.

  When I meet you, let’s hold hands and weep for humanity, okay?

  The terrifying existence of willing public-toilet-sitters in this town is why my publicist, Chris, is genuinely confused when I say I never want any publicity. He tells me that I will change my mind.

  In the words of the greatest singer ever, Whitney Houston, on the greatest reality show that ever was, Being Bobby Brown: “Hell to the naw.”

  Even if I was Beyoncé, even if I woke up like that? I would still prefer to stay hidden. I would still want to quietly write scripts back there in the corner where no one could see me. I never want anyone looking at me. Being looked at makes me nervous.

  When I am required by ABC to do publicity, I often feel (and, sadly, look) like Bambi’s mother—right before the hunter shoots her. Her head snapped up, ears cocked, eyes wide, all freaked out . . .

  It’s not an attractive look.

  At Dartmouth, I acted in some plays for a student theater group named BUTA. I enjoyed it. I sort of reveled in it. I was even mildly decent at it. I got compliments. But I wasn’t me. I never had to step in front of an audience as Shonda Rhimes. My own words and thoughts were not needed. I just said whatever Ntozake Shange or George C. Wolfe or Shakespeare told me to say. No one was looking at me. They were looking through me to the writers. I never felt I was visible onstage.

  Back then, I had fun in front of an audience. But now? It didn’t matter the venue or the medium. Now, it was always akin to torture. And season after season, the TCAs were a prime torture method.

  Every year, twice a year, all the cable and network channels host a weeklong event for TV critics called, quite simply, TCAs. It’s a chance for the critics to talk to actors, showrunners, directors. More times than I can count, ABC has requested my presence on a TCA panel.

  Onstage doing a panel at TCAs, I know I always looked fine. In fact, I looked stern—like a scolding schoolmarm. I’ve seen all the photos. I’m frowning, stony. I am actually amazed by my face’s ability to not betray my inner turmoil. The extreme fear seemed to freeze my face, turning me into a statue to protect me while onstage.

  But beforehand, every single time, before I got to the stage . . . there was mumbling, there was sweating, there was shaking. There was the makeup artist charged with reapplying the mascara that washed off my face after the silent thirty-second crying jag required to quell my rising hysteria. There were executives from ABC who gathered around to say encouraging things as I paced back and forth, my glassy eyeballs spinning with fear. And then there was the exquisite bottle of red wine always given to me by the network president, who owned a vineyard. Because I never ever spoke in public without two glasses of wine in my system. Nature’s beta blocker.

  I am not saying that it was right.

  I am saying that it worked.

  My only good memory of sitting on that TCA stage was the year Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry very kindly took pity on me
during a showrunners’ panel. As a storm of questions about an unhappy actress came my way, he jumped in, answering and deflecting the worst of them with a series of amazing jokes. Twenty minutes before, someone—I don’t remember who—had been forced to pry my fingers off the door handle of my car to get me inside. I hadn’t been resisting. I’d just been frozen by fear and unable to move.

  I was a walking panic attack. My stage fright was so complete and overwhelming that it ruled my every public appearance. Award acceptance speeches, interviews, talk shows . . . Oprah.

  Oprah.

  I have been interviewed by Oprah three times.

  Here is what I remember about being interviewed by Oprah.

  A white-hot flashing light behind my eyes. A strange numbness in my limbs. A high-pitched buzzing sound in my head.

  So, y’know . . . nothing.

  NOTHING.

  I am from the suburbs of Chicago. I was raised on Oprah. I was watching The Oprah Winfrey Show when it was called AM Chicago. I bought everything she told us to buy and read every book she told us to read. I took notes on every word of wisdom she shared with us through the television. I was baptized Catholic but I was Church of Oprah. If you are a person on the planet, you know what I am talking about. Everybody knows. It’s OPRAH.

  Being interviewed by Oprah was no small thing for me.

  What do I remember about these precious moments spent with her?

  Nothing.

  The O magazine interview? Nothing.

  The Oprah show interview with the cast of Grey’s Anatomy? Zilch.

  The Oprah’s Next Chapter interview with Kerry Washington? Not a damn thing.

  I do have vivid memories of the moments just before these interviews. That first time, Grey’s costume designer Mimi Melgaard smoothed my skirt and spun me around, checking to make sure I looked okay. Then she nodded with approval and pointed a firm finger at me.

  “Do not move until you see Oprah.”

  She didn’t have to tell me that.

  I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. I stood in the doorway of my office. Swaying very slightly back and forth. My feet already hurting in their very first pair of Manolo Blahniks.

  My mind was as blank as a baby chicken.

  I felt a layer of sweat wash over me. Sweat. Robotically, I began raising and lowering my arms, hoping to keep giant circular pit stains from appearing and ruining all of Mimi’s Pygmalion work.

  Raise and lower, raise and lower, raise and lower . . .

  Flapping. I was flapping my arms.

  Now I looked like a baby chicken.

  It didn’t matter. The rising terror thundering through me was growing louder and louder, taking me somewhere so far past fear that I felt almost . . . serene. It was like listening to a sound so high-pitched that your eardrums cease to be able to process it and the sound becomes silent. My screaming fear was so loud that it was silent.

  The baby chicken was losing its head.

  I watched as Oprah’s black SUV rumbled onto the studio lot. I watched as Oprah’s black SUV rolled into the VIP parking space. I watched as first one woman and then a second woman climbed from the black SUV. The first woman so recognizable, so familiar, that I literally only had to see the tip of her foot hitting the ground to know—it was Oprah. But the second woman . . . still flapping my sweaty arms, I stared. I couldn’t identify the second woman. Who was it?

  And then the arm flapping stopped.

  Gayle, my brain realized. That is Gayle. Sweet Mother of Television, I am looking at both Oprah AND Gayle.

  And that is the last thing I remember before the nothingness of terror stole all the fun away from me.

  “How was it?” My sisters Sandie and Delorse grilled me breathlessly on the phone later that evening. The ONE time I managed to impress my sisters. The one time, and—

  I. Don’t. Know.

  That is not what I said.

  Have you learned nothing about me since starting this book? No, you have. You know me. You know.

  I’m old. And I like to lie.

  I did what I’d always done. Once Oprah got back in her SUV and drove away, I spent hours wandering around, casually asking anyone who’d witnessed even a second of Oprah-ness all about it. Getting them to recap what they saw. It was a coping mechanism that had always worked for me. I was careful about it. Because when you go around asking people to tell you about yourself, you sound like kind of a jerk.

  “Hey, tell me what I said. What was I like? Was I funny? Was I interesting? Tell me more about me talking to Oprah. Was it good?”

  It’s one thing for people to know you are nervous and have stage fright. They are sympathetic to that. But how do you admit to people that you don’t remember the biggest interview of your career? That is weird. You know what people would say about that? I’ll tell you. People would say:

  Drugs.

  So I kept my mouth shut.

  It was the worst with Oprah. My admiration and fear merged into some sort of fireball of terror, so that the paintings were not just stolen off the walls of my brain but burned down to a heap of ashes. Never to be recovered.

  With everyone else, I stood a chance. A small chance. But to some degree, all the interviewers were scary. Every talk show was a blur. Every interview went the same way. Down the drain.

  yesyesyes

  I’ve been asked to be on Kimmel before.

  It makes sense that Jimmy Kimmel would want people from my shows on his show. Because of the ratings. My TGIT shows (that’s how ABC promotes my Thursday night lineup of shows—“Thank God It’s Thursday”) get good ratings. Good ratings are good for everyone. Here’s why: my good ratings mean that when actors who star on my shows are guests on Jimmy Kimmel Live (also on ABC), it’s great for Jimmy’s ratings too. What’s great for us is great for Jimmy.

  This is what is called synergy. I know this because people say this word to me a lot. Then they give me meaningful looks.

  “Synergy.” Meaningful look. I nod and smile, but between you and me? I think synergy sounds like the word one uses to define the calories two people burn off during sex.

  Think about it.

  Synergy.

  Anyway.

  It turns out that Jimmy, who is a truly hilarious person, a very nice guy and a great talk show host, doesn’t just like us for our ratings. He actually really likes our shows. I think he does anyway. He definitely likes the casts of our shows. This year, he especially seems to love the cast of Scandal. Which is just fine because the cast of Scandal loves Jimmy and they enjoy being on his show.

  And so each Thursday, actors like Kerry Washington and Katie Lowes get dressed up and pay Jimmy and his studio audience a visit. They come back and tell me stories. They tell me how much fun it is to be on Jimmy’s show. They tell me about the skits they do. The pranks they pull. The jokes they tell. It sounds fun. And when I watch it all on Jimmy Kimmel Live on TV late at night, it LOOKS fun.

  Yay for everyone!

  But for some reason, Jimmy now wants something more. For some reason, he wants me to be a guest on his show.

  Jimmy likes this idea.

  ABC likes this idea.

  My publicist likes this idea.

  I do not like this idea.

  No one cares.

  No one believes me.

  Because who doesn’t want to be on TV?

  Quick, everyone climb on that toilet and roll camera!

  This year, Jimmy’s people (every show has “people”—Kimmel’s are extraordinarily nice) have asked a few times if I will be a guest on his show.

  “They want you to be on Kimmel.”

  My publicist, Chris. Talking to me. We’re on the phone. Which is lucky for me because of the jail time that comes with assault.

  “You mean,” I say tightly, “Jimmy Kimmel LIVE.”

  “Uh-huh.” He sounds nonchalant. Casual. But he knows.

  He knows how I feel about publicity. He knows how I feel about being interviewed. He knows how
I feel about being interviewed on TV. And he especially knows how I feel about live TV.

  You know what happens on live TV?

  Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl Boob happens on live TV. Adele Dazeem happens on live TV. President Al Gore happens on live TV.

  You know what else happens on live TV?

  Shonda walking out to greet Jimmy and instead of walking like a normal person, I trip over my own feet, falling and cracking my head on the corner of Jimmy’s desk, causing my cerebrospinal fluid to leak out as I lie twitching on the ground with my dress bunched up around my waist, revealing my double Spanx to a national audience.

  Shonda, under the hot lights of the studio and massively overcome by nerves, sweating so profusely that tsunamis of water roll down my face in a hideous but fascinating car-crash way that no one can look away from until finally, dehydrated from the water loss, I simply end the misery by fainting on the floor in front of Jimmy’s desk.

  Shonda doing what I did at my U Penn applicant mixer when the stuffy old host said, “I’m not going to give you a lot of buffalo about our school . . .” What did I do? What I did was, surrounded by a lot of prep school kids with blond hair and perfect clothes, burst into loud uncontrollable snorting howling laughter. (Needless to say, I did not attend U Penn. Don’t smirk. I got in. But I couldn’t go there. One of those rich blond kids was gonna see me on campus and tell everyone about the snorting howling laughter.) I do that when I’m nervous. So imagine what it would be like when I’m extremely nervous. Live. With Jimmy.

  Shonda bursting into loud uncontrollable snorting howling laughter at Jimmy’s very first joke, laughter and snorting that gets louder and louder and louder, laughter that I know CANNOT BE STOPPED, that I have no chance of stopping despite the absurdity of laughing hysterically in front of Jimmy and Jimmy’s live studio audience, a fact which makes me scream with laughter, louder and louder, harder and harder—until the hiccups come.

  You can die from the hiccups. For real. I’m a fake doctor who writes fake medicine for TV. So I know stuff. And I am telling you, we killed Meredith’s stepmother with hiccups and that could happen to me. I could laugh until I hiccup and hiccup and die. I could DIE on live TV. Literally die. Do you want me to do that to Jimmy? Do you want me to make Jimmy the guy who killed a guest? I think not.