The house that Shonda almost didn’t build.
“The Residence,” Shonda Rhimes’ soapy new murder mystery set in The White House, was headed in a dark direction before a shocking Hollywood sex scandal stopped the series dead in its tracks.
Inspired by Kate Andersen Brower’s book of the same name, the TV whodunnit was originally set as a political drama a la “House of Cards,” with Kevin Spacey attached to produce, Brower told The Post.
Brower, who covered the Obama administration, began writing “The Residence” in 2012. The book documents the White House staff’s upstairs-downstairs relationship with US presidents and their families over the years. Filled with juicy and hilarious tales from behind the closed doors at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it became an instant bestseller when it dropped in April 2015. Soon after, Hollywood came calling.
“By that summer [of 2015], Kevin Spacey had optioned the [book’s] rights — and this was ‘House of Cards’ time; this was pre-scandal,” Brower recalled, referring to the success of Spacey’s Netflix series prior to his fall from grace over allegations of sexual harassment and assault.
Development on Spacey’s version of “The Residence” — which included former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly as a co-executive producer — got far enough along that he and his production company, Trigger Street, hired scribe Dustin Lance Black to pen a pilot script.
“He was great,” Brower said of Black, who won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the Sean Penn-starring Harvey Milk biopic, “Milk.”
“It was actually more of a ‘House of Cards’ [style show]” she added. “It was fiction. It was dark. It was not a comedy at all.”
“Lance wrote this wonderful pilot. [TV network] FX was involved. And then everything kind of went to ‘you-know-what.’”
In October 2017, actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of attempting to “seduce” him in 1986, when Rapp was 14 and the “American Beauty” star was 24. Spacey, now 65, apologized but later retracted the statement in 2022 when Rapp filed a civil battery lawsuit. A jury dismissed the case. Spacey has also avoided criminal convictions. Some charges have been dropped and others resulted in not guilty verdicts. Despite these legal victories, over 50 people have accused him of misconduct, which he denies.
“Things were starting to unravel,” Brower recalled. “And long story short, FX didn’t pick it up.”
“Lance said, ‘It’s been great working with you.’ It was heartbreaking for both of us because he was great. He was very collaborative. He wanted to talk about the [White House] staff and he wanted to get to know how I got these stories. He was wonderful.”
The TV rights to “The Residence” sat on the shelf until 2018 when Rhimes optioned the book. Brower was elated when her agent called with the “amazing” news.
“I’m very excited that it actually happened,” she shared. “A lot of books get bought [to adapt for TV and film] and nothing happens.”
Referring to her book “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies,” Brower revealed, “Reese Witherspoon had at one point optioned that and it never went [into production].”
“It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall. You just never know.”
Brower recognized that Rhimes’s adaptation of her book, starring Uzo Aduba, would be dramatically different than what Spacey planned.
“When I knew that Shonda Rhimes was involved, I knew it would be lighter,” she said. “It would be funnier. It would be beautifully done; lavish — like everything she does — and smart. So that was really exciting.”
Brower also praised “The Residence” showrunner Paul William Davies.
With her family and husband in tow, the author visited the set in LA and met with Davies.
“He had this very clear vision of what he wanted to do,” she said.
Though Brower was not involved in writing the show, she trusted Davies and Rhimes with her book.
“When someone as amazing as Shonda Rhimes comes to you, you have to just trust that they know the best way,” she said. “And I didn’t want to be one of those authors that can get in their own way and try to control [the show].”
Her faith in Davies and Rhimes was rewarded in the final edit.
“I love the show,” she said. “I think it’s amazing what [Davies] did.”
Brower added that Davies perfectly captured the “us versus them” power structure she observed between Residence staff and the First Family.
“That is the soul of the show,” she said.
All 8 episodes of “The Residence” are available to stream now on Netflix.
