Shonda Rhymes and Oprah reveal why they’ll never get married.

shonda oprah
The two biggest mahogany-hued media moguls in the world explained explicitly why matrimony has never fit their personal palates.
Shonda Rhimes, the serial series-producing savant who created the TV and cultural blockbusters “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and “How to Get Away With Murder,” has a special kinship with maven Oprah Winfrey besides altering the course of TV history.
Both love the company of men. But neither of them ever want to get married to them.
The two television titans exchanged testimonies on OWN’s “SuperSoul Sunday.” Rhimes, who is a mother of three, said it’s important for a woman at a certain period in her life to make the declaration: “I don’t want to get married.”
“[It] feels obvious and maybe silly or something to people who are married or people who are older, people who have been through it,” Rhimes said. “But if you’re a woman in your 30s or 40s, that’s a big deal. Everybody’s asking you all the time if it’s going to happen. There’s a huge amount of pressure.”
Rhimes added that intense peer and societal pressures to have children and become a wife can be oppressive, even claustrophobic. “It’s a lot like the desire to want to have children in our society,” Rhimes said. “You’re supposed to want it, and if you don’t want it, what’s wrong with you?”
Rhimes underwent an introspection of her life and she realized that, early on, she never dreamed of walking down the isle.
“I’m one of those people, since I was 5, I could tell you I was going to have kids. I could tell you I was going to have three. I could tell you they were going to be girls,” she says. “But I have never wanted to get married. I never played bride. I was never interested. I don’t know what it is; I never wanted to get married.”
Don’t get it twisted however; Rhimes loves men and loves being in the company of men — in spurts. “I love having boyfriends. I love dating,” Rhimes says. “I do not want a husband in my house.”
Winfrey can definitely identify, and takes it even one step further. She long ago admitted that she had no maternal instincts and would subsequently have no children. But it wasn’t until after she fell in love with life partner Steadman Graham that realized that marriage was not for her, either.
“I was supposed to do a book at the same time … and the wedding and the book were happening around the same time. We were on our way from the book party and Stedman said he did not want to have his wedding disturbed by all these people asking me about the book — which I ended up not doing,” Oprah says. “I said, ‘OK. All right.’ So he said, ‘We should just postpone this wedding.’ I said, ‘OK.’ And that was it. We have never discussed it again.”
The moratorium on marriage plans helped Oprah have an epiphany. “What I realized is, I don’t want to be married,” said Oprah. “Because I could not have the life that I created for myself … I knew that I couldn’t do it.”
What do think about Rhimes and Winfrey — who are now simply known as Shonda and Oprah — never wanting to ever get married?
 

About Post Author

Comments

From the Web

Skip to content