‘The First Lady’ Examines Recurring Issues Faced By Women In The White House

“I was terrified. I’m not going to lie. I was absolutely terrified.”

This is Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis, admitting that her role in the new series The First Lady caused her extreme levels of anxiety.

The series, which follows three women who occupied The White House while their husbands served as the President of The United States, stars Davis as Michelle Obama, Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford, and Gillian Anderson as Eleanor Roosevelt.

The interweaving story lines reveal what it meant to face uniquely unprecedented challenges while shouldering the burden of being the partner of the most powerful men in the world.

Davis confessed her feelings about taking on a character who played such an important role in history as she said, “it’s absolutely not the same as approaching any other character. It’s so specific. And I had the insurmountable task of everyone knows who Michelle Obama is. Everybody has claimed ownership of her. Everybody has a time period where they loved her hair or hated her hair or loved her eyebrows or hated her eyebrows. There is nothing about her that they want desecrated.”

To prep for the role, Davis says that, “I probably listened to [Michelle Obama’s] podcasts over a hundred times, and still felt terrified.”

Anderson says that because of the historical nature of her character, “you don’t treat it like any other role — you take it a lot more seriously, and it does feel like there’s a lot more pressure.” She quickly adds about her take on Roosevelt, “People are either going to love it or hate it, and that is, at the end of the day, none of my business. I just cross my fingers and hope for the best.”

Pfeiffer felt that, “It was an honor and a privilege to play Betty Ford.”

Of the former First Lady she portrays, she says, “It’s one thing to be brave in the privacy of your own circumstances. Betty Ford did it in front of the whole world and still managed to be fearless, frank, and kind. For millions of women across this country, she wrote a new chapter of American history, practically on a daily basis, shedding light on many issues no first lady had ever acknowledged, challenges that affected thousands of people while being utterly taboo to discuss — from breast cancer to drug and alcohol abuse.”

In researching Roosevelt, Anderson says that what she found fascinating about watching her speak was that, “that it was like there was no clock ticking. She was going to say what she was going to say, and she felt that even though she was terrified of public speaking and even though she had grown up being told that she was an ugly duckling, and that she had no worth in the world, she knew that what she had to say and what she had to do were so much more important than the fear that she felt.”

Executive Producer Cathy Schulman says that the whole purpose of the series was to, “shift the lens from the patriarchal portrayal of American history — that’s all we’ve been given to know and to learn — and to raise the curtain on these untold stories really as if these White House walls could talk.”

Schulman says that the creative team found that what the three women portrayed in the series had in common was ‘fascinating,’ explaining, “in so many ways is that none of them wanted to be there. Eleanor wanted to be there but only if she could be president. She didn’t want to be there as first lady. Betty went into the White House kicking and screaming, and Michelle was absolutely terrified for the lives of herself and her family. [Ultimately, they discovered] that living in that house turned out to be a benefit to themselves, to their families, and their countries ultimately was a really interesting unifier that they had.”

Hoping for future seasons, fellow executive producer and director of the series, Susanne Bier says that Dolley Madison would be ‘an incredible character to bring to life,’ and that she would be ‘be very intrigued to depict Hillary Clinton.’ Schulman adds that at the moment, she’s ‘obsessing over Martha Washington.’

Bier, summing up her journey with the series, says, “you know what? When I started getting involved in this project, I was just, kind of, shocked by the similarities of the walls that these three women banged up against. It’s over such a long stretch of time, and yet many of the issues Michelle Obama was up against were exactly the same as Eleanor Roosevelt. So, yes, history has changed, but it’s still very much a man’s world we are living in, which is why I find it incredibly important to do a show like that.”

Schulman adds, “It’s an incredible that we are finally at a place where we can do things like this. It’s still a struggle, but it’s enormously important to shift the lens. Obviously, we hope, on behalf of all women, that we can continue to do this kind of content.”

‘The First Lady’ airs Sunday nights at 9e/p on Showtime.