Claire Donald
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
I know.
And to round it out, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Didn't she write a sequel to one of them?
She sure did, Tess.
She sure did.
And we are getting to that.
So she studied under Deborah Martin Chase.
Obviously, Deborah has a huge impact on Shonda and her career.
Shonda ranked at the top of her class at USC as well.
And she graduated with an MFA in screenwriting in 1994.
So, you know, she must be thinking like,
I just had a great internship.
I'm screenwriting at USC.
Life is going to be easy.
No, it was not.
Her career was not glamorous early on.
She spent years unemployed, struggling financially, writing scripts that went nowhere.
She was living in her sister's basement at one point.
And so she was so anxious about the future and like not knowing where to go with her writing that she took the role of a receptionist at an advertising agency.
And while she was there, she got the shot to write copy for a Barbie poster.