Eye candy! The men of Shondaland — Shonda Rhimes’ TV production company — have been making viewers swoon since Grey’s Anatomy premiered in 2005.
Patrick Dempsey — whose character on the medical drama, Dr. Derek Shepherd, earned the nickname “McDreamy” — has said that his kids aren’t impressed by his heartthrob status. Dempsey shares three children with his wife, Jillian Fink: daughter Talula, born in 2002, and twin boys Sullivan and Darby, born in 2007.
“Oh, yeah, they make fun of me,” the Maine native told Entertainment Tonight in August 2019, four years after he left the series. “They don’t let me take my stuff too seriously, which is good.”
Tony Goldwyn — who played President Fitzgerald “Fitz” Thomas Grant III on Scandal — is well aware that good-looking leading men are a calling card of every Shondaland series.
“Oh, yeah. Shonda has a whole thing she teases us about,” the Divergent actor told The Cut in February 2016. “She says in Shondaland, in the love scenes, the boys have to be the ones to take their clothes off, and the women, the girls can do whatever they want.”
While speaking with Vanity Fair in April 2021 about her Netflix show Bridgerton, Rhimes said that she wanted to focus on the feminine perspective in the TV adaptation of Julia Quinn‘s novels.
“What I liked was the ability to explore things from a woman’s point of view. I wanted the female gaze happening in the books to happen on television,” she told the outlet.
Regé-Jean Page, who starred as Simon Basset in season 1 of the historical-romance series, decided to leave the show after its acclaimed debut. Rhimes told Vanity Fair that although Page is “amazing,” she and her business partner, Betsy Beers, are well-versed in finding dashing leading men to replace outgoing cast members.
“That’s our job and something that Betsy and I have been doing since — well, God, has it been 20 years now? — is finding guys. I mean, hopefully ladies too, but finding men that our audiences find devastatingly attractive, and they become incredibly overly attached to, and they get enraged about when we move them about in any way,” the showrunner said.
Season 2 of the period drama focused on Lord Anthony Bridgerton, played by Jonathan Bailey, whose search for love was a steamy one. The England native defended the show’s focus on sex and the interior lives of women during a February 2022 conversation with Entertainment Weekly.
“There’s so many people who will go, ‘Oh, yeah, Bonkerton.’ But the female gaze is so important because there are many ways people communicate by sex, and what sex means and what your body means to someone else. It’s important that there’s an inversion of sexuality and how people are exploited in the storytelling of sex,” he explained.
Scroll through to see what the men of Shondaland are up to now:
Eye candy! The men of Shondaland — Shonda Rhimes’ TV production company — have been making viewers swoon since Grey’s Anatomy premiered in 2005.
Patrick Dempsey — whose character on the medical drama, Dr. Derek Shepherd, earned the nickname “McDreamy” — has said that his kids aren’t impressed by his heartthrob status. Dempsey shares three children with his wife, Jillian Fink: daughter Talula, born in 2002, and twin boys Sullivan and Darby, born in 2007.
“Oh, yeah, they make fun of me,” the Maine native told Entertainment Tonight in August 2019, four years after he left the series. “They don’t let me take my stuff too seriously, which is good.”
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Tony Goldwyn — who played President Fitzgerald “Fitz” Thomas Grant III on Scandal — is well aware that good-looking leading men are a calling card of every Shondaland series.
“Oh, yeah. Shonda has a whole thing she teases us about,” the Divergent actor told The Cut in February 2016. “She says in Shondaland, in the love scenes, the boys have to be the ones to take their clothes off, and the women, the girls can do whatever they want.”
While speaking with Vanity Fair in April 2021 about her Netflix show Bridgerton, Rhimes said that she wanted to focus on the feminine perspective in the TV adaptation of Julia Quinn‘s novels.
“What I liked was the ability to explore things from a woman’s point of view. I wanted the female gaze happening in the books to happen on television,” she told the outlet.
Regé-Jean Page, who starred as Simon Basset in season 1 of the historical-romance series, decided to leave the show after its acclaimed debut. Rhimes told Vanity Fair that although Page is “amazing,” she and her business partner, Betsy Beers, are well-versed in finding dashing leading men to replace outgoing cast members.
“That’s our job and something that Betsy and I have been doing since — well, God, has it been 20 years now? — is finding guys. I mean, hopefully ladies too, but finding men that our audiences find devastatingly attractive, and they become incredibly overly attached to, and they get enraged about when we move them about in any way,” the showrunner said.
Season 2 of the period drama focused on Lord Anthony Bridgerton, played by Jonathan Bailey, whose search for love was a steamy one. The England native defended the show’s focus on sex and the interior lives of women during a February 2022 conversation with Entertainment Weekly.
“There’s so many people who will go, ‘Oh, yeah, Bonkerton.’ But the female gaze is so important because there are many ways people communicate by sex, and what sex means and what your body means to someone else. It’s important that there’s an inversion of sexuality and how people are exploited in the storytelling of sex,” he explained.
Scroll through to see what the men of Shondaland are up to now:
Credit: Mitch Haaseth/Shindaland/Nowalk/Abc/Kobal/Shutterstock; David Fisher/Shutterstock
Alfred Enoch — ‘How to Get Away With Murder’
The Harry Potter alum appeared in the 2021 Apple TV+ series Foundation after the crime drama came to an end in May 2020. He also returned to the stage, portraying Romeo in a 2021 production of Romeo and Juliet at the Globe Theatre in London.
In May 2022, he served as Dramaturg for Shades of Blue at the London performing arts venue Sadler’s Wells.
Credit: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP/Shutterstock; Rob Latour/Shutterstock
Billy Brown — ‘How to Get Away With Murder’
The California native, who played a hunky detective on the ABC smash, went on to star in the 2018 film Proud Mary opposite Taraji P. Henson.
Credit: Courtesy of ABC/YouTube; MediaPunch/Shutterstock
Jack Falahee — ‘How to Get Away With Murder’
The New York University alum, known to Shondaland fans as Connor Walsh, portrayed Frank Stringellow on the PBS historical drama Mercy Street from 2016 to 2017. Falahee and his childhood friend DJ Elephante launched their musical project, Diplomacy, in September 2019.
Credit: Courtesy of ABC/YouTube; MediaPunch/Shutterstock
Matt McGorry
The Orange Is the New Black alum starred in Archive 81 in 2022 following his turn as the privileged Asher Millstone.
Credit: Ron Tom/Abc-Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock; Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
Justin Chambers
Chambers played Dr. Alex Karev for 16 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, exiting the show in 2020. In 2022, he appeared in the Paramount+ miniseries The Offer as Marlon Brando.
Credit: Craig Sjodin/Abc-Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock; Mairo Cinquetti/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Patrick Dempsey
After leaving the medical drama series in 2015, Dempsey starred in the 2016 film Bridget Jones’s Baby and the Sky Original series Devils. He will reprise his role as Patrick Philip in the 2022 Enchanted sequel, Disenchanted.
Credit: Randy Holmes/Abc-Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock; Matt Baron/Shutterstock
Eric Dane
The “McSteamy” to Dempsey’s “McDreamy” on Grey’s Anatomy, Dane left the show after season 8 in 2012. The California native went on to star in the TNT drama The Last Ship and plays Cal Jacobs on Euphoria.
Credit: Abc-Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock; Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock
Jesse Williams
Williams joined the Grey’s Anatomy cast in 2009, portraying Jackson Avery, and left in 2022 after season 19. He was nominated for a Tony Award in 2022 for his role in the Broadway play Take Me Out and is slated to appear in season 3 of Only Murders in the Building.
Credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix; Maria Laura Antonelli/Shutterstock
Regé-Jean Page
The Bridgerton star left the Netflix period drama after one season in 2021 as the series turned its focus on a different character’s love story. He went on to appear in the 2022 movie The Great Man and was cast in the fantasy film Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
Credit: Nick Briggs/Netflix; Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
Jonathan Bailey
The Broadchurch alum will portray the role of Fiyero in the two-part Wicked film adaptation. He received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination in 2021 for his role as the eldest Bridgerton sibling on Shondaland’s Netflix hit. He is set to return for season 3 of the series.
Credit: Shondaland/Abc Studios/Kobal/Shutterstock; Gregory Pace/Shutterstock
Tony Goldwyn
After playing the President of the United States on Scandal from 2012 to 2018, Goldwyn appeared in the critically acclaimed 2021 film King Richard.
