Tony Goldwyn explains Shonda Rhimes’s genius

If it happens a few times in a career you’re lucky, but I’ve experienced it a couple of times, where something works, the concept just really works as a piece of entertainment, and it seems at the same time to touch….to happen at the right moment, in our sort of social history, and I think that the combination of doing a show about politics and about the power center of Washington that involved an interracial love affair, was able to be incredibly entertaining and at the same time tackle social issues, that are right on the surface of what we’re all thinking about or talking about. Shonda Rhimes just hit it, I think, with this concept, at a time when it was really needed.

Larry King: And we could accept black white love affairs…

Tony Goldwyn: Yeah! And she did it in a way where, I remember, I’ve probably talked to you about this before...when ‘Scandal’ premiered, the notion of the President of the United States having a) an illicit affair, and b) an affair with a woman of a different color, was provocative to say the least, and now I think, partly because of people like Shonda Rhimes and storytelling, that’s become not so remarkable, fortunately. The same way that Shonda had my Republican Chief of Staff, by the third episode we found out that he had a husband, and that was sort of startling and stunning, and I now I don’t think that would be too remarkable, seven years later.

Larry King: Watch new episodes of “Larry King Now” Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on demand on Ora TV and Hulu.