Chris Van Dusen’s collaboration with Shonda Rhimes goes back a long way. In fact, it dates back 16 years, to just before the very first episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, when, in 2004, Van Dusen was a recent graduate of University of Southern California’s Peter Stark Producing Program, ready to take on Hollywood. As is often the path for bright, ambitious youngsters with similar ambitions, Van Dusen looked for assistant positions. Despite learning about most aspects of film and television production in school, it’s on-the-job experience that will get you to the places you want to be in Hollywood, and Van Dusen had long wanted to be a creator with his hand helming his own projects.
“I’ve always been a writer in some form,” says Van Dusen, who originally grew up in Maryland as an only child. “Growing up, I spent more time in front of the TV than I think my parents would like to know.”
After a few years as Rhimes’ assistant, Van Dusen got into the writers’ room of Grey’s, with his first official credit on the season three episode, “My Favorite Mistake.” Since then, he’s worked on nearly all of Shondaland’s shows, including Private Practice and The Catch. Before being given the reigns of Bridgerton — Shondaland’s first series in the overall development deal with Netflix — he was co-executive producer on Scandal. But after over a decade writing for and helping to produce the Shondaland slate, Van Dusen was itching to get into a different tone and setting.
Bridgerton was the answer. The eight-episode series is a saucy romance that follows the high society of Regency London with a focus on the Bridgerton family — specifically, Daphne Bridgerton and her quest for a perfect match. The Bridgerton books, by New York Times Bestselling author Julia Quinn and from which the show is adapted, highlighted Van Dusen’s favorite storytelling elements: a powerful core group of characters encircled by romance, sex and mystery. To top it off, Van Dusen had long been intrigued by a period piece, and, in his eyes, Regency London was begging for a reimagining. Thus, Bridgerton was Van Dusen’s perfect match.
Before the series premiere on December 25 on Netflix, Shondaland sat down with Van Dusen to chat about his creative process, coming up in the Shondaland fold and the challenges and joys of helming a huge property.
VALENTINA VALENTINI: What has been the biggest challenge of being the captain of a project like Bridgerton?
CHRIS VAN DUSEN: I don’t think there’s been anything easy about the show, but that’s of course what made it so rewarding. Bridgerton is a massive series and there are so many people who, as the showrunner, I am ultimately responsible for. There were so many things that I had to be across day to day that it could oftentimes be overwhelming. So, yeah, this is the hardest job I’ve ever had, but that has made it the most satisfying.
VV: Did you ever have an OMG moment?
CVD: Actually, it was our very first day of shooting. We started with a really intense, intimate love scene between Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon (Regé-Jean Page). They just knocked it out of the park. It was as if they had worked together for years, and it’s just something that I always remember — sitting in video village, watching them and witnessing their chemistry. That’s when I knew that we had something special. I knew that we got it right.
VV: What do you want audiences to take away from this show?
CVD: I want them to be able to escape, to be transported to another time and place and live with these people. I want them to see themselves in these characters and relate and laugh and love and cry right along with them. At the end of the day, Bridgerton is a show about love. And I think that’s something that everyone wants, too.
VV: Has the pandemic affected getting Bridgerton out to the world?
CVD: It’s definitely been a challenge, but thankfully we’d already wrapped Bridgerton before Covid-19 hit. Since then, we’ve been able to work remotely on the show and still launch this year. But with the pandemic, it’s an entirely new world now. We spend a lot of time on Zoom and Google Hangouts. We mixed the show virtually, almost all of the editing was done virtually. It’s brought up unique challenges and I think going forward there are now a whole slew of new challenges to consider in order to make sure we’re handling the most important thing: everyone’s safety.
VV: This isn’t your first foray into Shondaland. Do you remember meeting Shonda for the first time?
CVD: I think it was around 2004, and we met on a bench outside what are now the Grey’s Anatomy bungalows at Prospect Studios. I was interviewing to be her assistant. And now, I am a very punctual person — I’m the guy who shows up at the airport a solid two hours before my plane takes off. I’m never late. And that day, I was late. I don’t even remember what the reason was, but I remember running from my car to that bench to meet her. Once I got there, of course, I profusely apologized. Lucky for me, she didn’t hold it against me.
VV: What was it like, those early days of working at Shondaland?
CVD: I started as Shonda’s assistant, but we always talked about what I had wanted to do after that. I told her I wanted to write, and one of the first things she told me is that if I wanted to write that I had to make time to write. From very early on she always told me that at the end of the day, when you least want to do it, you still have to go and work on your scripts. So that’s what I did. After being her assistant for three years, I started writing on Grey’s and on Scandal.
Coming up through the ranks at Shondaland you learn a lot of things about writing in the best way possible. Shondaland shows always tell stories that reflect the world in which we live in what I think are such powerful, moving ways. Working directly with Shonda for so long, it became really clear that she has this amazing ability to seem to always know what audiences want to see, and to create these characters that are relatable yet still nuanced and flawed. Whether it was Meredith telling Derek to choose her on Grey’s or Fitz and Liv stuck together in a bunker for an entire episode of Scandal, she just instinctively knows that’s what the audience wants to see. You hope that working with her for that long, some of that rubs off on you. And I learned that it wasn’t just about exploring these varied worlds and characters, but always at the end of the day having something to say about the world too, without ever feeling preachy. I think that’s something you learn how to do coming up through the ranks on Shondaland shows.
VV: Did you always want to be a writer for television?
CVD: I would say that I was always a writer in some form or another. I wanted to be a journalist and went to school for that, but I quickly found that something was lacking for me in terms of the creative side of writing. I shifted my focus to what I was really obsessed with: film and TV. Even at a young age, I was obsessed with TV, but I wasn’t watching the kinds of things the other kids in the neighborhood were talking about. I learned pretty early on that my tastes were more eclectic, more diverse. They’d be talking about Friends and Seinfeld and I’d be watching things like The Golden Girls and Martin. I think that’s why my tastes to this day are so varied.
VV: How would you describe your creative process?
CVD: My creative process changes project-to-project and even day-to-day; I think that’s helped to keep things fresh and exciting. Working at Shondaland for so long, I know that everything comes down to character. Meaning that you really need to know who your characters are, what makes them tick, what makes them do the thing that they’re doing and why. It’s not about telling a story that’s full of cool moves or crazy twists, it’s about revealing something interesting about the character you’re writing. Often, I intentionally dig a hole for myself — like write myself into a corner — so that I’m forced to find the most interesting way out of it. It’s about trying to find unexpected ways to showcase my characters. It’s a fairly simple method: I ask myself what the easiest way to do something would be, and then I do the opposite.
VV: As creators with a platform, we get to say something about the world and to the world. What is that message for you?
CVD: That’s another thing that changes for me based on the project. With Bridgerton I wanted to escape to this lush, beautiful, cinematic world, but I also wanted to explore real topics like gender and class and race and sexuality — topics that are relevant and important. And I think we’ve been able to do that with this show, and it’s something I want to be able to do with all of my work. I wouldn’t be able to really be proud of something if I wasn’t saying something meaningful about the world that we all live in.
Valentina Valentini is a London-based entertainment, travel and food writer for Vanity Fair, Vulture, Variety, Thrillist, Heated, and The Washington Post. Her personal essays can be read in the Los Angeles Times, Longreads, and her tangents and general complaints can be seen on Twitter at @ByValentinaV.
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