ABC at TCA: Stars, EPs of GREY’S ANATOMY, SCANDAL, HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER Talk TGIT

To celebrate the very successful TGIT block on ABC, the network is paneling the three shows — GREY’S ANATOMY, SCANDAL, and HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER — to close out its first Television Critics Association day.

Follow along for a live-blog, starting at 5 PM PT…

5:18 PM: Starting off with a sizzle reel, including the block’s name-checking in other shows.

5:20 PM: Kerry Washington says the leads of the various shows don’t often see each other beyond this, but they did run into each other at Debbie Allen’s Hot Chocolate Nutcracker last year.

5:21 PM: “I’m very proud to be a part of it,” Ellen Pompeo says of being the first Shondaland leading lady.

5:22 PM: “Their actions with each other gets dirtier,” Pete Nowalk says of HTGAWM season 2.

5:23 PM: “I don’t even know if that’s a question I can answer,” Shonda Rhimes says when asked what she loves about the show. “GREY’S and SCANDAL, I can’t tell you what I like about them, because they’re so much a part of me, that it would be telling you what I like about me, which is weird.”

5:24 PM: Would Kerry and Shonda like to see Olivia as First Lady? “We don’t comment on future storylines,” Rhimes says. “I am interested in playing things Shonda Rhimes writes,” Washington says.

5:25 PM: How would Olivia handle Donald Trump? Rhimes wonders if Olivia would ask for him to do something about the hair. “You can send him over to Meredith and I can cut his vocal cords out,” Pompeo says.

5:26 PM: “I don’t think we spend our time focusing on the awards or accolades,” Rhimes says when it’s asked about whether HTGAWM’s legacy might be breaking the barrier of a woman of color winning best actress at the Emmy.

“If you are in this business for awards, you are in the wrong business,” Davis says.

Rhimes is very uncomfortable with the notion of talking about SCANDAL and HTGAWM’s legacy right now.

5:30 PM: “I go to them when I need help and [asking] if this sucks?…They’re my cheerleaders,” Nowalk says of Rhimes and Betsy Beers.

5:31 PM: “It was Viola’s idea. It was probably the first thing she told [the EPs]…that was always the goal to find a good place to put it in the script,” Nowalk says of Annalise taking off her wig. He says the collaboration makes the show work.

“Sometimes you have ideas that are not so good,” Davis notes. “I wanted to be private in public. I felt if I played a woman and it was all about this, I would fail miserably…it was my way of womaning up. I knew it would make an impact, too. Lord knows when I took th wig off, I thought, ‘Why did I have this idea?'”

5:33 PM: “There’s a huge beautiful Calzona fanbase online, that I have a special place in my heart for,” Rhimes says of fans of same sex couples. “I think there’s a beautiful community online.”

5:34 PM: “There is not going to be a biopic on my life,” Rhimes says when asked who would play her in a movie. She says she not interested.

5:36 PM: “I agree with everything Paul Lee says,” Rhimes says when asked whether she agrees GREY’S can continue on for years.

5:37 PM: How will Meredith change now that she’s not partially defined by her relationship with Derek? “Meredith Grey has never been defined by her relationship with a man,” Rhimes says. Pompeo agrees, saying she doesn’t think any Shondaland woman has been defined by a man.

5:38 PM: “The decision to have the character die the way that he did was not a difficult one in the sense that what were the options?” Rhimes asked. “Either Derek was going to walk out on Meredith and their kids…[and] what would that mean is the love was not true…to me that was untenable. Meredith and Derek’s love had to remain Meredith and Derek’s love. The only way to have that remain true to me was that Derek had to die…that was the one way to make Derek and Meredith’s magic remain true.”

“I guess I can say we had a lot of discussions about it,” she continues about Patrick Dempsey leaving. “It’s not easy or fun…we’d be working really hard for a long time together…it’s never easy for any of us.”

“As difficult as those decisions are, that’s her best writing,” Pompeo says of filming her final Meredith/Derek scenes. “As difficult as it is, we have something really juicy [to work with].”

5:41 PM: How did Rhimes come to guest on THE MINDY PROJECT? “I did THE MINDY PROJECT because I made a ridiculous promise to myself that I would say yes to everything for a bit of time,” Rhimes says. She wouldn’t have said yes, otherwise, because acting is so not her thing. “I can not walk and talk at the same time…we tried it, it didn’t work,” Rhimes cracks.

5:43 PM: Nowalk praises Davis for suggesting they meet Annalise’s mother.

5:45 PM: “I always thought it was misguided when people tell me Olivia is their role model, because she’s having an affair with a married man who is the President — who killed people — and she stole an election for him,” Washington says. She says there’s a lot to look up to with Olivia, but she shouldn’t be a role model. “Nothing is perfect in Shondaland, people are real,” Washington praises.

5:47 PM: “It’s not currently on my list in this moment in time,” Rhimes says of possibly directing. She finds it intriguing, but it’s not on the forefront of her mind.

5:48 PM: Pompeo says her personality is more suited to having a long-term job versus leaving and going from job to job. She compares it to boxing, because no one has knocked the show out. — “It’s an endurance thing now,” Pompeo jokes.

Pompeo talked to Washington before SCANDAL to advise her to treat this the job as an athlete would — Washington passed the same advice to Davis.

“I am also grateful, but I am also tired,” Davis says. Davis says she came into the show because she wanted to create a human being — not a personality, not a gimmick.

5:51 PM: “I once was running three shows,” Rhimes says of her time on PP/GA/SCANDAL. She notes she has GA/SCANDAL now, while THE CATCH has its own showrunner and HTGAWM has Nowalk. She points out Shondaland has four shows, but she, personally, only has two right now.

5:54 PM: Teases for the next season: “I feel that GREY’S is a much lighter tone this year we’re going for…we do have this world in which Mredith is single, and she is living this life she has never thought she would be living again,” Rhimes says. “She’s living in a house with her sisters, and surrounded by…women who are dating and having a whole life and she’s not interested in that. You start to wonder is there a second life here? What I’m excited about is the medical growth [Meredith]’s discovering as a leader…I guess the theme is rebirth for all of the characters.”

“So many people lose their spouses..a lot of people feel they can’t go on again…to tell [this story] is something so many people can relate to,” Pompeo says. She says it’s important if they can make a difference to even one person.

“SCANDAL, we are picking up almost where we left off…the world had been fairly blown apart except for Olivia and Fitz,” Rhimes says. “Things were not going well for people. We pick up right there, in that environment, and we see what happens next.”

“The big question for Annalise, it’s about a week where we left off [with Rebecca’s murder and] what has she wrought?” Nowalk teases. “There’s going to be a lot of complications stemming from that.”

Additionally, ‘we’re going to reveal a lot more about their backstories,” Nowalk says, including “how they met each other, and what dark twisted things they did [in the past]…you think you know, but you don’t know them at all.”

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