Once upon a time, Shonda Rhimes knew how Scandal was going to end.

And then Donald Trump was elected.

Thats how the prolific creator breaks it down in The Hollywood Reporters extensive oral history of the ABC political drama, which airs its 100th episode on Thursday.

Although Rhimes wouldnt spill the original ending shed had planned for Olivia Pope and her gladiators, she revealed that Trumps election made her go back to the drawing board to develop a fitting conclusion in the current political climate.

We had a destination, and I dont know if thats our destination anymore, Rhimes explained. The day after the election, the whole landscape changed.

Since the series beginning, a Republican has been president, which Rhimes said was a choice she made to humanize the political party under Obamas administration. With Trump in office, portraying Republicans in the world of Scandal has been considerably more challenging.

We had a Democratic president [when Scandal premiered], so I wanted to take a Republican president and make him human, she said. Then our stories would be about what would happen if the wheels came off the bus and nobody was driving the bus. The problem now is the wheels have come off the bus, and nobodys driving.

Over the last two seasons, writers have had to scrap storylines that veered too closely to real headlines such as a Russian hacking scandal that compromised a presidential election and now the shows approach has changed entirely.

There was a very specific planned progression that was going to be easy to tell because Hillary [Clinton] was going to be president, and we were going to be living in the light. But it didnt occur, Rhimes said. Im still trying to come to terms with that. One bad thing after another keeps happening, and the world feels very unstable. So in a world in which all of the things that we would write on Scandal are happening in real life, its very hard to write Scandal the way we used to, when it was like, Lets make Washington the most outrageous, horrifying place it could ever be.

To read the full Scandal oral history, head over to The Hollywood Reporter .