In the pilot episode of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) wakes up next to Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) in her living room after a night of hooking up. Meredith frantically gets up to head to her first day of work at Seattle Grace Hospital. Little does she know that Derek is essentially her boss. Creator Shonda Rhimes revealed on the “9 to 5ish with theSkimm” podcast (via Insider) that a room full of old male television executives gave her a hard time for starting her show this way.

“I remember getting called into a room full of old men and they brought us in to tell me that the show was a problem because nobody was gonna watch a show about a woman who would sleep with a man the night before her first day of work,” Rhimes said. “And they were dead serious.”

Rhimes somewhat understood where the male...