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THR, NY Times

Shonda Rhimes Reflects on the ‘Angry Black Woman’ Flap

Oct 14, 2014  •  Post A Comment

A few days before Lacey Rose of The Hollywood Reporter sat down with Shonda Rhimes for a feature story, the “Angry Black Woman” article broke in The New York Times. So Lacey asked Rhimes about it.

Writes Lacey in THR, Rhimes’ “race and gender had become an unavoidable part of the conversation a few days before our meeting, when The New York Times ran an essay about Rhimes by [its] TV critic Alessandra Stanley. It began: ‘When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called “How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.”'”

Lacey also writes, “When I join Rhimes, 44, a single mother of three, in her homey office at Hollywood’s Sunset Gower Studios, the furor has settled down and she’s reflecting on the positives that have come out of it. ‘Some really amazing articles were written that had the conversation that I’ve been trying to have for a very long time, which, coming from me, makes me sound like I’m just, “Rrrraw!” ’ she mimics a roar, her painted nails clawing the air.

“Her inbox has been deluged with notes from concerned friends and colleagues, many of whom called for the piece to be retracted. Rhimes would prefer it remain: ‘In this world in which we all feel we’re so full of gender equality and we’re a postracial [society] and Obama is president, it’s a very good reminder to see the casual racial bias and odd misogyny from a woman written in a paper that we all think of as being so liberal.’ The irony, of course, is that Stanley intended not to bury Rhimes but to praise her and her growing influence on the TV landscape.”

To read more of Lacey’s feature about Shonda Rhimes we urge you to click here, which will take you to the original story.

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