And so, I really thought at the time that it would be disrespectful to try to go into history and pretend that these terrible things had not happened. Because the last thing I ever want to do is whitewash history in a way that removes Black people from spaces where they actually were. I also think that I was under the apprehension, at the time, that in order to really honor Black history-well, I mean, there are obviously many other marginalized groups, but, to your question, Black history-you had to be truthful about the various traumas and the history. It has definitely coalesced into something that’s not entirely accurate, but I certainly was not articulate in my thoughts. So, in 2017, I spoke awkwardly about race. Obviously, this is a boiled-down quote that’s been passed down telephone-style from multiple different sources, so I’d love to hear your side on that. Allegedly, you said that you don’t write Black characters in your historical fiction because you don’t want to write about characters who are suffering.
I do have to ask this, because I’ve seen some talk of this online: A paraphrased quote from you is floating around the internet, sourced from people who attended book events in 2017 in which you were a panelist.
She knows what she’s doing.” And obviously she did! And she basically did the same thing for me, which was an honor, to be honest, to be a recipient of that trust. Because, I said, “Look, I’m not going to tell Shonda Rhimes how to make television. It was really exactly what happened with Bridgerton, when I retained no creative control. I know how to write a television script.” It was a huge compliment, just the level of trust she had. And I checked in with her a few times, but for the most part, she just said, “You do what you know how to do.” Then she said, “I don’t know how to write a novel. And then I took those scripts and figured out how to turn them into a novel. So she wrote six scripts-two of them she wrote with someone else, but for the most part, she wrote six scripts-then handed them off to me. What we really did was take turns with what we did best and what our expertise is.
Well, to be completely frank, I have no direct knowledge of Shonda’s process, because we didn’t work together holed up in a room.
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