A Note From Shonda Rhimes
I tell people it took me four days to write the pilot script for Scandal. Which is only technically true. It really took me one year and four days. I met Judy Smith (the real-life inspiration for Olivia Pope), I got an exciting idea and then…I sat around and thought about it for a year. One year of thinking until I could picture the entire show in my head. Then I flew to a beachy location, walked into my hotel room, immediately put on my headphones and began my four days of writing.
For me, headphones are key. Headphones are everything. I can’t write unless I have music in head. I need that wall of sound wiping away the literal world and transporting my brain to somewhere fictional, somewhere better. Somewhere with Gladiators in Suits.
During those four days at the beach, the soundtrack of my writing was the funky, delicious music of the 1970s. Now, I was a very small kid in the 70s (I was a baby, I was a fetus, I was an ovum, I’m only 12 years old now) but I have older siblings and I have memories of sitting on the orange shag carpet in our family room while my teenaged brothers and sisters worked it out dancing with their friends to Sly and the Family Stone. Marvin Gaye’s music was the soundtrack to the experience of sitting with my head locked between my eldest sister’s knees as she tightly cornrowed my hair for summer. I’ve known every lyric to every Stevie Wonder song for as long as I can remember. The music of the 70s is the music of my childhood.
These days, now that I’m an adult, 70s music is most often the music inside my head because of what it evokes. The moments in history that birthed it. It’s the music that came after they killed Jack and Bobby and Martin and Malcolm, it’s the music after Nixon disappointed a nation, it’s the music of the sexual revolution and the feminist movement. 70s music is a sound both cynical and empowered, both pained and sexy. For me, it’s also distinctly badass. It has a beat that moves in sync with the rhythms of your hips and your heart. You have to dance. You just…have to.
For four days at the beach, I danced in my lounge chair while I typed on my laptop. I sang out loud to Stevie as I rewrote scenes by the pool, much to the dismay of vacationers around me. My headphones on, I danced and I sang and I grooved. I was a Brick House, I was a Car Wash, I was Donna Summer, I was every song I ever grew up with. And I wrote. And I wrote. Four days later, I flew home with the completed pilot script of Scandal.
Still, I didn’t think that the show would have a ‘70s sound. For the next four months, I didn’t think about anything but casting and shooting the pilot. I didn’t think about my headphones again until I was sitting in the editing room with Editor Matt Ramsey and my producing partner Betsy Beers. We were watching a rough cut in which the show had a lot of perky fresh alternative band music in it. And I couldn’t get comfortable. Like, everything itched in the wrong way. It was just wrong. There needed to be something more cynical, empowered, pained, sexy and badass about it. It needed to feel more like…well, more like cynical, empowered, pained, sexy, badass Olivia Pope. And it became clear. Olivia Pope IS the music of the 70s.
I called our brilliant music supervisor Alex Patsavas for help. I want to say that Matt and Alex and Betsy and I have been placing songs together for a long time, we all go back to Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice and so these music conversations have a fast, crazy shorthand that we all seem to understand. I also want to tell you that there is no bigger rush in an editing room than when you find the right music for the right moment. It’s like…finding a dance partner whose moves fit yours.
Matt and I placed “Respect Yourself” by the Staple Singers in the pilot episode during the sequence in which the Gladiators are investigating the murder of Sully St James’ girlfriend and suddenly, with that first song, the entire show just…exploded with life. The musical style reflected the fierce determination of the characters, acted as a counterpoint to the speed at which we were pacing the action and the dialogue, and added a layer of “don’t you wish you were dancing with us” attitude to it all. It made sure that everyone would understand that this was Not Your Mama’s Political TV Show.
We worked hard to keep that vibe going as we continued to produce episodes. “War” plays in episode 104 (Enemy of the State), “Everyday People” and “I Believe In You (You Believe in Me)” are in episode 105 (Crash and Burn). Johnnie Taylor’s quiet soulful song ends with Olivia opening her front door to see the President of the United States standing there. The look on Kerry’s face as the music plays out is wonderful.
Sometimes we used songs that broke the mould of our music style. Songs like “The Light” by The Album Leaf. Matt and I were searching for a sound to underscore the complex broken nature of Fitz and Olivia’s relationship. In episode 106 (The Trail), early in the episode, Fitz asks Olivia to stand there with him in the halls of the campaign office. Just stand there. For one minute. Because they have been so busy avoiding the electric pull between them that they’ve never really even looked at one another. Never really even been themselves with each other. And so they stand there, looking at one another and in that one minute, Fitz and Olivia fall in love. Then, near the end of the same episode, years after the first time, years filled with disappointment and pain, Fitz asks Olivia for one minute again and she says yes. And so for one minute, these two people who believe they have no chance at happiness hold one another and comfort one another and say goodbye. Both moments needed to use the same song and I wanted that song to be incredible. I wanted perfection. When we heard “The Light”, I was absolutely hooked. It’s not from the 70s, it’s not funk, it’s not badass. It’s painful longing. It’s hopeful and broken all at the same time. It was exactly the right music for our One Minute moments. And it has become the theme of Fitz and Olivia’s love.
We tried a hundred songs before we found the correct song for the end of episode 220 (A Woman Scorned). Fitz shows up and tells Olivia to “sit here and watch me choose you”. As I sat on stage watching as Tony Goldwyn and Kerry Washington create a beautiful ballet of small gestures and looks, I knew we needed the perfect song to fit the magic of the moment when Olivia realizes that Fitz will give up the Presidency for her. The only song that could ever fit that moment was “You’re All I Need To Get By” sung by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Suddenly, all those hours getting my hair cornrowed had a purpose.
My favorite episode of Season 2 is episode 219 (752) in which we get a chance to see flashbacks of Huck’s life. I needed a song to show the joy and the horror of Huck’s split life as both a killer and a family man. How do you find a song like that? The use of “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash was a stroke of genius by Alex and Matt. It’s such a hopeful song full of the lovely brightness of Nash’s voice. But juxtaposed against the torture and the birth of Huck’s child, it makes you first laugh out loud at the irony and then weep at the darkness of the emotional hole in which Huck exists.
There are so many wonderful songs here for you to enjoy – check out Bettye LaVette’s slow sultry rendition of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” or Nina Simone’s extraordinary “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today” or the sparkling booty-shaking joy of “Green Onions” by Booker T. & The MGs. I could honestly write about these songs all day but I won’t. It’s better if you just listen. Know that the music of this show was chosen with great care and reflects the love and dedication of every single person who works on this show. We just LIKE our jobs so damned much! We thank everyone who watches and everyone we know and we especially thank Alex Patsavas for her exquisite taste and the good people at Stax for making this soundtrack happen.
For those of you who heard this music the first time around, welcome home. For those of you who are hearing it for the first time, pleased to meet you. Put on your headphones and give this music a listen. And become a Gladiator in a Suit.
—Shonda Rhimes
Scandal 2013