Illustration: Lauren Tamaki
Imagine being the right arm of Shonda Rhimes and the house she built, Shondaland. This has been the career of television and film producer Betsy Beers since 2009, when she started working alongside Rhimes on shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal that changed the Zeitgeist. Now, Beers & Co. has switched to Netflix after a nine-digit deal with the streamer to produce and create original programming. The first for Beers is Bridgerton, now available on Netflix and highly edible, a regency era novel full of beautiful fantasies, beautiful settings and beautiful people. In 2021, Beers will partner with Rhimes in Inventing Anna, a series based on the story of swindler and swindler Anna Delvey unveiled in a 2018 New York Magazine feature. Beers lives in Los Angeles with her husband and dog. Here, how she does it.
On adjusting WFH during the pandemic:
For the past 500 years, my entire professional life has been getting up in the morning and going into some kind of office or going to a set – I can be in meetings or I can be spending five hours in a room with a writer. I am not a person who has worked at home before, so it was an amazing change. The general pace of the morning has changed because I am also adapting to my husband’s schedule. I have to say, something that worked much better than I expected: my husband and I still really love each other, and he put up with me. He is a criminal defense attorney and uses our home as a base.
About creating new routines:
The first thing we do when we wake up is my husband and I always walk the dog, Willie. When we went to the office, I went to the gym or a gym class a few times a week. Now, I work at home. We are those people who own a rowing machine and kettlebells. I try to be available at the same time as always, which was around nine. Now, it’s a little bit like Willie is my assistant. I took over the back room, and when he arrives around ten o’clock, if I’m not sitting there working, he beats his imaginary clock and sits down and looks at me. We try to make sure that our people actually have lunch from one to two. And then we finished around five o’clock walking the dog, marking the day. We try to make sure we don’t look at our phones. We are going out, walking and talking about other things. Everyone in the office will tell you that there is a point where I say, “Okay, now I’m taking the dog for a walk”, and they know that for half an hour, it will be difficult to reach me. You need to find ways to create artificial boundaries between work and life, now that physical boundaries don’t exist.
About telling a modern story with Bridgerton:
Sometimes these things [period dramas] they are really distancing themselves because the reality of that world and time period overcomes the similarity between then and now. From the beginning, we never wanted the viewer to feel that he was being taken out of his world. We constantly wanted the viewer to be able to identify himself. The joy was watching Chris [Van Dusen, Bridgerton’s showrunner] creating this world that looks really modern thematically because it deals with the limitations that society and class and creation and culture and family place on us. But at the same time, it is this charming escapist realm where these incredible actors are representing a world that seems very distant.
About switching to Netflix:
I loved working at ABC, and the work we did at ABC and at shows continues. It has been great to have access to a wider range of stories that we could tell. I was used to a pilot model, and the idea of writing and filming all the episodes at once was a new experience. It’s a different way of thinking because we write for commercial breaks. The pace of the narrative changes. Unlike the television network, there is one more immediate bonus. Most of the time, you get used to people watching episodes as they happen. This feeling of releasing an entire series at once is cool.
In the best advice she received:
I was on the set of 200 cigarettes. We were close to the West Side Highway and it was the middle of the night. There was something I can’t remember specifically, but it was something I didn’t really know what to do. Someone came up and said, “Should we do X, Y and Z?” and I pretended to vaguely know what they were talking about. This older guy, who I think was wearing accessories, came up to me and said, “Can I just give you some advice?” He said: “Look, if you don’t know something, admit it. Because someone will help you. ”I never forgot that. If you cheat something, everyone will be able to find out that you cheated and will not be so good. And the best thing about people is that they love to share their knowledge. They love to say what they know. They love to help. It was one of the best lessons for those just starting out.
In the ambition and drive to continue creating:
There are always more good stories to tell. And you always meet people you want to tell stories to. Meeting Shonda was obviously a great gift of my life. It sounds cliché at first, but it’s about people. My mind continues to be challenged and excited by the different minds to which I am exposed. I love the moment when you take something, be it an article or a book, and you see something. Then the moment comes when you sit down with a writer and he sees something that has a totally different element than you imagined. And then you see it come to life and you have the incredible experience of being able to work and watch actors. And then it becomes a show. Literally, there is never a dull moment, and that’s what keeps me going – because there are always surprises. If it is a good story, if it is executed in a way you love, you spread it to the world, hoping that others will see it. And in a strange way, looking at it, they see you. And I find that incredibly significant.