Donald Trump’s presidency has thrown a monkey wrench in just about everything in Washington, D.C. (i.e. The Swamp). Politics are no longer usual, coastal elites are on the fritz, and Hollywood is tearing its hair out.
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For Shonda Rhimes, creator of the ABC hit Scandal, Trump’s November victory completely curtailed the Washington insider drama. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Rhimes was really banking on Hillary Clinton being president for the sake of her show.
“There was a very specific planned progression that was going to be easy to tell because Hillary was going to be president, and we were going to be living in the light,” Rhimes said. “But it didn’t occur. I’m still trying to come to terms with that.”
Rhimes continued. “One bad thing after another keeps happening, and the world feels very unstable. So in a world in which all of the things that we would write on Scandal are happening in real life, it’s very hard to write Scandal the way we used to, when it was like, ‘Let’s make [Kerry] Washington the most outrageous, horrifying place it could ever be.'”
Actress Kerry Washington, who plays the lead protagonist Olivia Pope, added, “Now, we have a hard time competing with reality.”
Bellamy Young, who plays First Lady and then Senator Mellie Grant, even admitted that the writers planned to make the show’s sixth season about Russia. “They planned for season six to arc out the Russians hacking the election — and then the Russians hacked the election!”
Scandal isn’t the only show that’s gripping with the realities of a Trump presidency and what it does for creativity. HBO’s Veep is going through the same thing.
Cast members from Scandal endorsed Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, Tony Goldwyn, who plays Fitz, said, “We were all very upset; we’d worked hard to get Hillary elected.”
It begs the question that maybe these Hollywood liberals are so vocal about their support for boring candidates like Hillary purely for the fact that their writers will have original material. With Trump in office, life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
