In Hollywood, it has been a truth universally acknowledged that films and TV shows aimed directly at women are not as lucrative as those made for men. Those with the power to green-light projects have long argued that women will buy into something marketed at men—but men will not do the same for something marketed at women.
Increasingly, representation-starved audiences have been voting with their dollars to expose that accepted truth for the lie it is. The film industry’s most lucrative genre, the big-budget superhero film, has moved beyond an era dominated by white men named Chris and hit pay dirt with stories centering on nonwhite and female heroes. But no one in Hollywood has had more success betting that “television for women” belongs in the mainstream, rather than being siloed onto specialized channels, than Shonda Rhimes and her creative team at Shondaland.
After more than 15 years of proving that the diverse, female-fronted storytelling on shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal could translate to monster ratings for ABC, Shondaland has brought its magic to Netflix. According to new data released by the streamer Wednesday, the steamy, romantic, holiday sensation Bridgerton has smashed all viewing records to become what the streamer itself is calling “the biggest series ever on Netflix.”
Just how big is that? According to Netflix’s numbers, “82 million households around the world chose to watch Bridgerton in its first 28 days.” That’s 20 million more than even Netflix’s own bullish projections. These massive numbers do come with a caveat: the streamer bases its figures on the number of subscribers who watch at least two minutes of a piece of content, an amount of time the company has determined to be “long enough to indicate the choice was intentional.” That metric has resulted in big, bold ratings numbers that have to be taken with a grain of salt.
Still, it’s impossible to ignore the show’s larger impact on the zeitgeist. Leading lady Phoebe Dynevor has become the subject of a viral impression and her costar Regé-Jean Page has rocketed from being mostly unknown to an overnight leading man in the “Bond rumor” phase of stardom. According to Netflix’s reporting, the show ranked number one overall in 83 separate countries, including the U.S., U.K., Brazil, France, South Africa, Singapore, India, and Thailand. It seems, then, that it wasn’t just women tuning in to this glossy adaptation of Julia Quinn’s nine-novel series, and discovering the addictive pleasures of the most female-friendly of all genres: Regency romance.
Perhaps Bridgerton’s success can be attributed partially to the extraordinary times we live in. The show arrived at the end of a very tough year, offering a lush and soapy escape to a touch-starved, isolated audience that, thanks to stay-at-home orders, was watching more TV than ever. “People have been home,” Netflix’s newly-minted head of global TV, Bela Bajaria, told Vanity Fair. Staying at home “has resulted in people discovering many different kinds of genres and kinds of shows.” Bajaria, who recently ran Netflix’s local-language originals across Europe, the Middle East, Turkey, Africa, India, Asia, and Latin America, said that the global appeal of unabashedly romantic genres like Korean dramas foreshadowed how something like Bridgerton might pop all over the world.
This year, entertainment moved almost completely out of the public-facing multiplex and into the privacy of homes—which may also have something to do with this embrace of programming that caters primarily to people who are not straight men. “It’s interesting to me, how many men have said to me, ‘Oh, my wife loves [another Netflix romance show] Virgin River. She watches all the time, and I just now watch it with her too,’” Bajaria said. “It might be archaic to think that men don’t watch with women.”
But given Shondaland’s track record, Bridgerton’s runaway success can hardly be considered a pandemic fluke. The Bridgerton sensation is, after all, exactly what Netflix was hoping for when it struck a multimillion dollar deal with Rhimes back in 2017. And while Bajaria is unsurprised by Shondaland generating yet another smash hit, she was a little shocked to discover just how many men were enjoying the series right out of the gate: “I’ve had male friends talk about watching Bridgerton, and that’s not exactly who I thought would be the first audience.”
Rhimes hit the ground running in the so-called Golden Age of television, when it was impossible to swing an Emmy without hitting morally murky white men like Tony Soprano, Don Draper, Walter White, or even Netflix’s very own flagship, algorithmically-generated anti-hero, Frank Underwood. But even as TV moved out of its anti-hero phase and into a blockbuster genre era where Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and Stranger Things reigned supreme, Rhimes was methodically building up her brand and an empire that defied trends. When Netflix shook off its reputation for letting data drive its original content and became better known for putting the peak in Peak TV by platforming, well, everything, there could be no better spot for Rhimes and her team to do what it has always done best.
With its glut of original programming—the streamer released 371 titles in 2019 alone—that is unbeholden to any particular scheduling constraints, episode lengths, traditional seasonal packaging, or external influence of advertisers, Netflix now aims to serve up something for every audience and taste at once. For all its overwhelming qualities, the beauty of Peak TV is that no audience is too niche—and there’s no need to anxiously round off the sharp edges of any given genre in an attempt to please the masses.
“Once you try to make a show for everybody, you’re probably making it for nobody,” Bajaria pointed out. “Based on those [Bridgerton] books, what is really the vision of the story? The real DNA of the shows can come through. Shondaland knows how to do this kind of genre, and do it in its full glory.” An unexpected benefit of serving up something bold that doesn’t try for universal appeal is, as Netflix has found, that you might attract an audience you never expected.
There are a number of shows outside the Shondland–verse that paved the way for Bridgerton’s massive success. Audiences have long been feasting on messy, soapy British costume drama families, from the Crawleys of Downton Abbey to the Windsors of The Crown. But Bridgerton is a step beyond and into the world of romance novels—and a lucrative fandom that has, for as long as it has existed, been mocked, marginalized, and dismissed. Even Outlander author Diana Gabaldon would prefer you not label her steamy, swoony books as “romance.”
For Rhimes, however, the genre presented huge, untapped potential that could reach beyond the women who have long been reading romance novels in secret. When Chris Van Dusen’s Shondaland show Scandal was coming to a close just as the company had signed its new Netflix deal, Van Dusen sat down with Rhimes to discuss what he might do next. She told him about Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton books; he read them, and became “instantly addicted,” he told me. When he began adapting the series, there was never any question about trying to shy away from what made it resonate with readers. The word he used to describe Rhimes’s instincts: “foresight.”
Just as the rise of superhero storytelling found a broader audience by first inviting comic book fans to come out of the lockers they’d long been stuffed into, Shondaland embracing Regency romance has validated legions of (largely female) readers who used to hide their steamier titles away behind other, more “acceptable” books. Without the stigma, these relatable stories of men and women trying (and often failing) to find love have hit new nerves. The genre is really having its moment, with no less than political activist Stacey Abrams—a serious woman with a serious intellect—refusing to apologize for her career writing romance novels. Asked by The Washington Post in 2018 why she didn’t attempt to hide her writing career before going into politics, she responded, simply: “I am proud of what I’ve accomplished.”
As a result of Bridgerton’s success on Netflix, the streamer said, three books from Quinn’s series are on The New York Times best-seller list for the first time, including The Duke and I at number one—two whole decades after its release. The teen romance sensation of Twilight and its erotic, adult rehash, Fifty Shades of Grey, had their money-making moments in the sun, but neither of them invited readers or film audiences into the traditionally reserved, early-19th-century Regency era popularized by Jane Austen novels and sustained by a long tradition of bodice rippers. “There’s this feeling out there that period shows are a little conservative,” Van Dusen said. “With Bridgerton, I immediately saw there was ample space here to do something different, and put a spin on the genre in a way that I don’t think anyone has tried or done before.”
Quinn’s heroines are classic Shondaland, and much less helpless than stereotypical romance protagonists. (They may rip their own bodices, thank you very much. They may also behave villainously—something both the book and the show didn’t always handle perfectly.) Bridgerton viewers can take comfort in knowing that some of the series’ most electric women—Daphne’s clever sister Eloise (Claudia Jessie) and gossip writer Penelope (Nicola Coughlan)—take center stage in future books, as well as future seasons. Meanwhile, season two of Bridgerton will, according to Quinn’s books, put eldest Bridgerton brother Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) into the spotlight.
Though Van Dusen was committed to translating the unabashedly romantic and female-driven sex of Quinn’s novels directly to the screen, Shondaland shows are known for being not only female-fronted, but diverse as well. The decision to adapt Quinn’s books with diverse casting, Bajaria said, is another undeniable reason for its success.
“Being a woman of color,” Bajaria said, “I don’t get to see myself in Hollywood or U.S. shows in a certain way. Regency era—it’s been done, you know, beautifully, but in a very specific way. To be able to see this kind of inclusive look at that period and interesting, complicated women, I think it’s really refreshing and very powerful.”
Here, Bajaria said, is where Hollywood’s instinct to silo content into categories meant just for men or women or certain racial demographics is long past its expiration point: “We just have such a wide range of members with very different tastes. Looking at programming like that is too limiting, and I think you’re going to miss out if you do.” Van Dusen pointed out that Shondaland has never run its shop that way: “That’s an antiquated idea. Look at all the the Shondaland shows. They appeal to such a wide variety of people that it’s not just television and programming for women, or for men, or for any one specific demographic. The audience is really everyone. And I think with Bridgerton especially, no matter who you are, you can find something to love about the show.”
All products featured on Vanity Fair are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
— Stanley Tucci on His Love Story With Colin Firth
— Why We Can’t Let Media Executives Reward Trump’s Cronies
— The Hidden History of the Mary Pickford Cocktail
— Thank You, Leslie Jones, for Making the News Feel Bearable
— Cover Story: The Charming Billie Eilish
— A Complete Beginner’s Guide to WandaVision
— Gillian Anderson Breaks Down Her Career, From The X-Files to The Crown
— From the Archive: Douglas Fairbanks Jr. on the Real Mary Pickford
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.
