Shonda Rhimes is one of the hottest names in television these days. It’s not often that a show creator is nearly as big as the TV stars. Rhimes isn’t just the name behind one massive show, she’s the creator and producer of several enormously successful shows, many of them with overlapping actors, and all of them contained within the magical world known as Shondaland.
It all began with Grey’s Anatomy in 2005. The popularity of the show and tightly written episodes showed the powers that be at the ABC network that there was an appetite for Rhimes’ creations. Two years later, the spin-off Private Practice launched. After that, the next Shondaland productions released - the short-lived Off the Map and the enormous hit Scandal, in 2011 and 2012 respectively. We then got How to Get Away with Murder and The Catch, as well as the new entry kicking off in March of 2018, Station 19.
From Ellen Pompeo to Kerry Washington, we have watched several Shondaland actors grow into A-listers in front of our very eyes. While a few of the actors were stars prior to joining their respective shows, life before Shondaland wasn’t as sweet for everyone.
Here are 15 Embarrassing Roles Shondaland Stars Want You To Forget.
Eric Dane in Saved by the Bell
In general, landing a role on the iconic TV show Saved by the Bell, is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. Long before Eric Dane was McSteamy on Grey’s Anatomy, he played Tad Pogue, a brainless hunk trying to win the affections of Leah Remini during the Malibu Sands Beach Resort story arc on Saved by the Bell. This was also Dane’s first ever professional acting role. While his performance is a tad cringeworthy, it’s Dane’s behind-the-scenes story of filming the one and only episode he appeared in that is most embarrassing.
The actor says that it was on that day that he learned the difference between the actor’s job and the director’s.
After one particularly bad take, a confused Dane apparently yelled “cut!” which didn’t go over well with the person in charge. “The director tore my head off,” Dane remembers, but he never made the mistake again.
Viola Davis in Get Rich or Die Tryin'
Viola Davis is an industry powerhouse and How to Get Away with Murder has helped her achieve that. Despite the respect she’s received from her peers, it’s only been within the last decade that Davis has become well-known to audiences. Before that, she suffered through some small gigs and lesser movies, but one that stands out from the rest, and not in a good way.
Regardless of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s more recent work, his first movie Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was a terrible attempt. Even though it isn’t unlike the many other rags to riches movies, this one just feels cornier because it’s 50 Cent’s life story.
Davis plays grandma in this stinker. She’s quite good, easily the best part of the movie. That being said, her resume has Get Rich or Die Tryin’ on it for life.
Ellen Pompeo in Daredevil
For Ellen Pompeo, it’s not the quality of her early role or her performance that is embarrassing; it’s the movie that she was in. We’re talking about Daredevil - and not the high-quality Netflix show either. While many actors would be happy to take part in a major motion picture production, few could be proud of a movie as bad as Daredevil.
Luckily, fans have largely forgotten Pompeo’s role in this disastrous movie. It could have been worse for her, much worse. Cast as Karen Page, Matt Murdock’s secretary, Pompeo’s character probably should have had a larger role in the movie. After all, she is one of Daredevil’s longest-serving characters as well as Murdock’s long-time love interest.
Pompeo is in the movie and, forgotten role or not, her name is forever attached to Daredevil.
Chyler Leigh in Kickboxing Academy
Over the last decade, Chyler Leigh grew from being known as Janey Briggs from Not Another Teen Movie to starring in Grey’s Anatomy as Dr. Lexie Grey and, more recently as Alex Danvers in Super Girl. If you go far back into Leigh’s acting past, before Not Another Teen Movie, you will find something unsavory. Some might even call it disgusting and unexplainable.
The movie in question is the shameful Kickboxing Academy. Leigh plays the lead, Cindy. In the movie, Leigh has her first on-camera make-out session with Danny, played by Christopher Khayman Lee. Lee is best known for playing the Red Ranger Andros, in Power Rangers in Space. What is not so well known about Lee is that he is Leigh’s brother. Now add that all up - Leigh’s first on-camera kiss was with her own brother.
Patrick Dempsey in Meatballs III: Summer Job
More than 30 years ago, Patrick Dempsey was just a young man trying to make a name for himself in show business. To do this, he had to take whatever he could get. In 1986, that was the lead role in Meatballs III: Summer Job. If you remember the first Meatballs, you’ll remember the main kid, Rudy. Well, Dempsey plays Rudy as a teenager.
The movie is bad, but you don’t need to have seen it to understand how truly embarrassing it is.
Here’s the plot: after a adult star is denied entrance to heaven, she must perform a good deed on earth to get in. Thankfully for the movie, her good deed is to help Rudy get laid. Considering that Dempsey wore glasses in this movie, and we all know how ugly his glasses are, it was quite a good deed.
Tony Goldwyn in Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI
Tony Goldwyn was a familiar face before Scandal, known best as the antagonist in Ghost. But before Ghost and Scandal, there was Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI, Goldwyn’s first acting role.
Even though Goldwyn plays it cool when speaking about the small role in an interview with Vanity Fair, saying “You’ve got to start somewhere in this business. I didn’t last long in that movie, though.”
His part in the movie is simply hilarious.
After meeting Jason on a dark forest road, Darren, Goldwyn’s character, gets out to confront the masked slasher. Standing there shaking in his boots, Darren meekly points the world’s smallest gun at Jason. A few seconds later, Goldwyn is stabbed with a lance and seen flying through the air like a rag doll.
Peter Krause in Blood Harvest
Many Shondaland fans were disappointed when, after only two seasons, The Catch was cancelled. Though Peter Krause, the actor who played lead character Benjamin Jones on the show, must have been a bit sore about the cancellation as well, but Krause is a professional. He’s been in the industry for a long time and has experienced cancellations before. He has learned to take the good with the bad, and has had his fair share of bad.
In 1987, Krause broke into the industry when he was offered the role of “boyfriend” in a new slasher movie called Blood Harvest. This movie, which would go on to become one of the worst slasher movies in history, is best known for starring Tiny Tim - a famed ukulele player.
Scott Foley in Sweet Valley High
For a long time, Scott Foley was one of those actors you knew, but were never quite sure where from. Before he landed his role on Scandal, he had been on Grey’s Anatomy, True Blood, Scrubs and Dawson’s Creek in recurring roles, but never was a major player. His first ever role was an embarrassing one on Sweet Valley High back in 1995. For this, he played the tree-hugging character Zack for one episode.
According to Foley, he thought better of his performance than the industry did.
“I made 230 bucks for that episode and quit my job waiting tables and thought, ‘This is it!’" he said. “Little did I know it’d be another four years before I got another acting job.” That next job would be a role on Step by Step. Dawson’s Creek followed that, leading to a happy ending for Mr. Foley.
Katherine Heigl in My Father the Hero
Katherine Heigl may feel that she doesn’t deserve the nasty reputation she’s been saddled with, but she’s said some things that come with consequences. She’s also done a few things that have raised some eyebrows, including her early work in the movie My Father the Hero. We’re not about to place all the blame on Heigl for this one. Unfortunately, she is the one that has to bear that cross.
When Disney decided to remake the French movie, Mon Pere, Ce Hero, it seems that the team didn’t quite think about how the content would translate. More than two decades after the movie was made, it feels almost alien to viewers. Aside from the kissing scenes between Heigl and her 22-year-old love interest, the entire movie’s premise is built on the illusion of a physical relationship between father and daughter. It’s an uncomfortable watch, to put it mildly.
Miguel Sandoval in Howard the Duck
As Miguel Sandoval prepares to enter the Station 19 phase of his career, it’s high time we honor the work he’s done in the past. With more than 35 years in the industry and over 160 acting credits, Sandoval has earned his recognition. From his work on Seinfeld to Medium, this man has had an excellent career to be proud of, but is that the case for every acting credit? What about Howard the Duck?
Usually in the running for the title of worst movie in history, Howard the Duck took many prisoners.
Sandoval is one of them. In perhaps the most embarrassing of all scenes in the movie, Sandoval is part of a bar fight. He’s one of the goons that Howard confronts for badmouthing Beverly (Lea Thompson). Specifically, Sandoval is the one that Howard tragically hits with a bottle.
Jay Hayden in Spring Break…
Jay Hayden is known to Shondaland fans as Danny Yoon from The Catch, but he is also slated to play Travis Montgomery on the new show, Station 19. Though Hayden has only been in the industry for little more than a decade, he has some embarrassing skeletons in his closet. At the beginning of his career, after appearing as an extra in How I Met Your Mother, he got a role in a little movie called Spring Break Massacre.
Don’t start questioning your movie knowledge if you haven’t heard of this one. In fact, pat yourself on the back for having missed it.
Seemingly shot with a camera phone from the early 2000s, Spring Break Massacre is alarmingly bad. The acting is atrocious and the script appears to have been pieced together by small children. Hayden may have left horror movies in his past, but his humble beginnings will always haunt him.
Mark Adair Rios in Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
Mark Adair Rios may not play the biggest characters in Shondaland, but he has appeared on three different shows in that universe: Grey’s Anatomy, Off the Map, and How to Get Away with Murder. The veteran actor has been in the industry since 1990 and has been in some excellent movies and television shows along the way.
When scanning through Rios’ history in show business, there are several embarrassing little projects, but maybe the funniest of all was his role in the iconic Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. This third movie in the franchise really helped conclude the story of Crocodile Dundee.
Rios’ role in the movie is as a Latino criminal who gets schooled by Dundee.
In truth, Rios’ scene is one of the better scenes in the movie, a poor man’s version of the “that’s not a knife” from the first one.
Grey Damon in The Devil Within
Grey Damon, one of the stars of the new Shondaland show Station 19, has had a very busy last few years. He’s acted on some of TV’s biggest shows and is about to start a journey on another. Even though Damon’s rise to fame has been exceptionally quick, the road wasn’t without its bumps. Take his role in the 2010 slasher The Devil Within, for example.
There’s always been a fine line between slasher movies that are bad and some that are so bad they’re good. Well, The Devil Within is a movie that is so bad it makes you angry they paid someone to make it.
In what must have been a high school drama project turned into a movie, The Devil Within takes the worst parts of good slasher movies, butchers them, and then mashes them together, forming an incoherent mess of a movie.
Danielle Savre in Bring It On: All or Nothing
Bring it On was a great little movie that gets better and smarter with age. If Danielle Savre from Station 19 was in that movie, she could have been proud, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t in the straight-to-DVD sequel, Bring It On Again, either. She was in the third movie, Bring It On: All or Nothing.
Did you know that Bring it On has spawned five sequels? That’s way too many.
Don’t worry if you haven’t seen the All of Nothing sequel. It’s almost shot-for-shot the same movie as the first. Actually, it’s basically the same as every movie in the franchise. The only difference here is Solange Knowles as the black cheerleader instead of Gabrielle Union and Hayden Panettiere as the white cheerleader instead of Kirsten Dunst. Savre is one of the lesser cheerleaders, just hoping no one she knows sees her in this movie.
Elizabeth Reaser in Twilight
Elizabeth Reaser is a fine actress - she’s been in many excellent productions, of which her stint on Grey’s Anatomy is included. It must be a difficult pill to swallow for Reaser that, of all the work she has done, her most embarrassing job was also her biggest. By that we mean Reaser’s role of mama vampire in the Twilight movie franchise.
The failure of the Twilight franchise really has nothing to do with Reaser. Her character, like nearly every character in those movies, was just poorly written. The execution was fine. If anything, Reaser’s performance nearly saved the character. At the end of the day, Reaser has a much larger bank account for her time on Twilight, a fee for having that eyesore on her resume from now until the end of time - or IMDB, whichever comes first.
Did we miss an embarrassing role our Shondaland stars may have appeared in? Let us know in the comments!
