Shonda Rhimes Recalls Telling ABC President That ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Couldn’t Be an ‘All-White Show’

If not for Shonda Rhimes’ casting-room intervention, Grey’s Anatomy would have looked very different — specifically, much whiter. The Grey’s creator says she had to insist that her ABC medical drama cast actors of color in a conversation with the network’s president at the time. In the new HBO documentary Seen & Heard: The History of Black Television, Rhimes shares how she did “something people didn’t do,” in that she chose not to write any character’s race into the Grey’s pilot script. So she was dismayed when she was presented only with white actors to cast. “I kept saying, like, ‘Where are all the actors?…