Glancing inside stage 12 at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood on a recent mid-March day, a person could be forgiven for thinking a phone service ad was being shot: The smartphones are out and in serious use.
But this is what’s it’s like during a lunch break on the set of “Scandal,” which, as the show that helped fuse TV watching and Twitter thumb-tapping, has as deep a relationship with the personal device as any tech company. And this isn’t an ordinary early spring afternoon — just five days from now, this freight train of a political drama will screech to a halt when filming wraps, forever.
As of Thursday’s finale, crisis manager Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and her band of cohorts will hang up their white hats.
So it’s little wonder that the cast is intent on keeping its digital scrapbook stocked. Selfies are being taken, and quick videos are being shot.
Created by prolific producer Shonda Rhimes, “Scandal” is a thoroughly modern nighttime soap. Centered on Pope, the first black female character to lead a network drama in nearly 40 years (and her heart-thumping love affair with President Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant played by Tony Goldwyn), “Scandal” premiered to little fanfare and middling reviews in spring 2012. But the decision to wed whiplash storytelling with the cast’s early adoption of social media, particularly Twitter, made the show a bona-fide hit and a symbol of hope for appointment television by the end of the second season.
Often dismissed as a guilty pleasure, the show took twist-and-turns storytelling to new heights and prepped viewers for them with breathless (as in “Can not breathe”) tweets. But it also dealt with topical matters, such as election rigging and police brutality, something ABC entertainment president Channing Dungey says should not to be overlooked when putting its legacy into context.
“The show won a Peabody for its willingness to tackle complex issues head on,” she said via email, “and I think part of its legacy — in addition to Kerry top-lining the show as an African-American woman — will be about its willingness to explore political culture, gender disparities, sexual politics and race in America.”
Thursday nights, which the show has called home since its debut, may never feel the same again, at least not to hundreds of thousands of #Gladiators.
The show’s end also begins the whittling of Rhimes’ 15-year presence at ABC. Although she will have four series (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “How to Get Away with Murder,” “Grey’s” spinoff “Station 19,” and “For the People”) on the network, Rhimes announced last year that her company, Shondaland, would exit ABC Studios for a multi-year deal with Netflix.
Gathered around the show’s iconic OPA conference table, Rhimes and executive producer Betsy Beers, along with some of the sprawling cast — Katie Lowes (Quinn Perkins) and Joe Morton (Rowan Pope) — reflected on the show’s run.
Q: Is it ending the way you thought it would?
Rhimes: It's ending exactly the way I thought it would, which is good because for a while there — it's not an easy thing to do. So I think we thought, sitting in the writer's room, are we going to make it in time? There's only so many exits to get there. Are we going to do it correctly and do it right? And I feel like we got there.
Beers: I didn't necessarily know what was going to happen exactly in the big sense. I had the experience (the cast) had. I try not to read the script until the table read. I thought it was amazing, and I thought in terms of the way — well, you'll see. But it's incredibly elegant and at least thinking about where we started, it's a beautiful way to finish.
Rhimes: I think I should say it's not as if I knew where we would end seven seasons ago. We ended the way I knew we were going to end when I figured it out a couple of months ago.
Morton: It was very satisfying. I think the was the ultimate feeling by the time we left the table read.
Q: How did you know it was time to end it — when did it all come together for you?
Rhimes: I don't know if there's a general answer to that because I have a show that's still going 14 seasons later. I always knew the story had an endpoint. I also knew that I didn't want this to be a show that stayed too long at a party, and I wanted to end while we were all still in it, while the story was still being told and told very well and we were all really excited about it. There was an evolution of these characters that you get to see happen and Olivia Pope had a place she was going. And when it was clear that we were getting there, it just felt organic.
Q: Is it hard not to feel nostalgic at this point?
Lowes: I am the person who's constantly making people remember memories from the pilot and first season. I don't know why I am doing that! Maybe that's my personal way of processing. I keep sitting here, having long scenes and saying like, "Kerry, I remember the first time you rang and the phone said 'Kerry Washington' … but I keep doing this just as a way to make people cry. (Laughs)
ON TELEVISION
“Scandal”
10 p.m. Thursday, ABC
