Three of America’s most impressive first ladies are ready for their television close-ups.
Showtime’s “The First Lady” shifts the camera’s focus to the women who brought about transformational change from the East Wing of the White House.
The 10-episode biographical drama, which premiered on Sunday, follows Michelle Obama (Viola Davis), Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer) Y eleanor roosevelt (gilliananderson) through the actual story.
The show’s creators used historical fiction to depict behind-the-scenes moments between the first couples by “imagining the kind of conversations, and arguments, that must have occurred within the walls of the White House between these events we’re all familiar with,” says the “first lady”. producer Cathy Schulman.
The dramatized scenes were governed by one rule: “That the general attitudes and points of view of the first ladies remain intact,” says Schulman.
So what is true and what is fictional in the first episode of “The First Lady”? We explore some key scenes:
Be warned, this article looks at the events depicted in Sunday’s “The First Lady.” So stop reading until you’ve seen the episode.
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Michelle Obama deals with Barack Obama’s strong security
A major subplot in Episode 1 follows the Obama family dealing with heavy security at their Chicago home, while Barack Obama (OT Fagbenle) remains an early Democratic candidate. True, Barack received a Secret Service security detail in May 2007, nine months before voting began in the Democratic presidential primary.
“It was the first time a presidential candidate received a protective device, which said something about the seriousness of the threats against him,” Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir “Becoming,” describing an agent “standing guard on the porch (less than the phalanx of security seen in his yard in “First Lady”).
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While the tense argument between the couple is fiction, it exemplifies Michelle’s hesitation about her husband entering politics and the real dangers facing the promising candidate who would become the first black president.
“The threats were there,” says producer Aaron Cooley. “That scene explores how this woman who wanted her husband to have a different career in the first place would feel at home.”
Michelle Obama turned out to be very popular in her husband’s election campaign, as shown on the screen. She wrote on “Becoming” that her team “started referring to me as ‘the closer’ because of the way I helped make decisions.”
Eleanor Roosevelt Finds FDR’s Most Famous Statement
Eleanor Roosevelt is shown in “First Lady” as the political partner she was with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Kiefer Sutherland), who was elected during the Great Depression in 1932. The first few episodes deal with Eleanor seeking a role in the White House beyond the first lady she (she eventually held weekly press conferences and became the first to speak at the party’s 1940 convention) and she reinforced her husband’s speeches.
In the first episode, Eleanor is shown delivering the most resounding words of FDR’s famous inaugural speech in 1933.
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“Eleanor Roosevelt was very impressed with his inaugural speech, but she wanted him to add a little more enthusiasm, as he always did. He always improved his speeches,” says biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook, adviser to the “First Lady” . “She had just read Henry David Thoreau and came across the phrase: ‘Nothing is as fearful as fear.’ “
Eleanor gave the book to FDR, who then revised his speech to say, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” As seen in “First Lady,” the speech, and that line, was a resounding success.
Betty Ford admits to having seen a psychiatrist
“The First Lady” alludes to a historical truth in its opening episode: During the 1973 Senate hearings to confirm his nomination as vice president under President Richard Nixon, then-US Representative Gerald Ford (Aaron Eckhart) was asked if he had ever I had seen a psychiatrist.
“If one thing were perfectly clear”, The New York Times‘, the hearings report decreed, “is that consulting a psychiatrist or psychotherapist remains an unforgivable sin for an American politician.”
It was his wife who sought treatment. Seeing a psychiatrist was one of many revelations Betty Ford made as first lady, removing the stigma of mental health care by bringing it out into the open.
In “The First Lady”, her revelation comes during a speech in front of the wives of Congress. Actually, Ford made the comments about him in a 1975 “60 minutes” Interview with Morley Safer.
Asked by Safer if he had needed “psychiatric help” and why, Ford answered candidly, speaking of a past physical injury:
“The doctor who was treating my neck, shoulder and back advised me that maybe psychiatric help could help me get over this problem. And following his advice, I went to a psychiatrist,” Ford said in the interview. “And it was very helpful to me, because apparently, I was giving too much of myself and not spending any time with Betty. It was all for the kids and my husband. And as a result, I was a bit banged up.” below. And she built my ego.”
According to “First Lady” historical consultant Catherine Allgor, Betty’s Episode 1 speech helps set the table for other major revelations that made her a social pioneer – of Betty Ford Clinic founder’s open struggles with addiction to speaking publicly about her breast cancer.
“The ‘First Lady’ scene highlights something amazing at the time, even talking about going to a shrink. But Betty Ford always recognized it,” says Allgor. “It sets the pattern that (Ford) is also going to talk about her own breast cancer, about her problems with alcohol and drugs. People didn’t talk about those things. But Betty Ford talked about the truths of her life and the People were just absolutely inspired by it.”
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Reference-www.usatoday.com