Executive Producer Cathy Schulman On Shaking Up the Patriarchal Viewpoint for ‘The First Lady’

Showtime’s The First Lady is an ambitious project. Not only does it try and explain the reasoning behind some of our country’s biggest decisions over the last 100 years, it turns itself inward as a domestic drama between husbands and wives who happen to be living in The White House. Executive Producer, Cathy Schulman, wanted to shake up our perception and play with historical fiction.

It is very rare for us to get portraits of first ladies from a feminine point of view. We must remember that Schulman and her team were not trying to simply show how history played out from these perspectives, but we see how it impacted their family lives. While we have portraits of Pat Nixon (Joan Allen, where are you?), Abigail Adams (Laura Linney), and even Laura Bush (Elizabeth Banks), Jackie is probably the closest we have gotten to the mission of honoring the point of view of the wife of a president. Schulman wanted to shake up that often patriarchal viewpoint.

“The concept behind the show was twofold. We wanted to shift the lens of history to a female lens. We often learn about history and major events through a male lens, and, oftentimes, it’s a patriarchal one. Or a paternalistic one. The other, and related one, was an intimate point of view. We wanted to find the humanity in between the events we normal see in a proscenium way. Fundamentally, when we see things happen in the world on a daily basis the decisions people make, especially those in power, are driven by their personal lives. It’s as if we have this perspective that things happen outside the complexity of the human experience, and they don’t. Nothing does. We tried to pinpoint the main historical, outward-facing events in these women’s lives–and some personal ones–and see how they connect. If a major event happens on June 1st and then another decision is made on July 5th, what happened in between there? That’s where you get into the wonder of historical fiction. Aaron Sorkin says that historical fiction is the difference between taking a photograph and painting a picture. There’s an interpretation in a painting, and that’s what we were trying to do.”

I kept coming back to the marriage that connects Eleanor Roosevelt’s relationship with Lorena Hickok to Barack Obama’s eventual support of Marriage Equality. It’s amazing that it took so long for gay marriage to be accepted when it hit so close to The White House, and the relationship between FDR and Eleanor was so progressive. “Change We Need” was Obama’s campaign slogan in 2008, but The First Lady reminds us, in many ways, how slow that change can take.

“What I love about their marriage is that it’s amazing that Eleanor and Franklin–in my interpretation and my belief– had a great marriage. It may have been a nonsexual marriage, but it was an incredible, loving partnership. They made their way through it. They have the great fireside chat, and Franklin throws the photos in the fire. It’s about truly accepting her for who she is. If, back then, there could have been such acceptance, why are we still talking about this? How is it possible that we are still on this? We keep repeating and repeating. Another thing that was intentional was when Michelle says to Barack, ‘Love is love’ and he agrees. You’re going to let politics stand in the way. Love is instinctual.”

Audiences are floored by Betty Ford’s resilience. Not only do we see how she survived breast cancer and released so much fear from women across the country, but her story of recovery is inspiring. Schulman wanted to compare that struggled with the current plague of drug addiction in America and show how stigma hasn’t dissipated as much as it has evolved and changed. There is a deep sense of loneliness that feels connected to Betty Ford’s disappointment of not becoming a dancer.

“Where you will see the most clarity with our intentions is when she checks into rehab and she says that she’s not a drug addict or a drunk. She was in The White House, and she wasn’t getting drunk in a parking lot. It creeps up on people, and it hits naturally. We wanted to bring in the involvement with dependency issues, especially given the current opioid crisis. There was a lack of knowledge about not mixing drugs and alcohol, and that was reckless. There is this notion that the self-realization that it takes to understand that addiction is running their life surprises the one with addiction as much as it does the people around them. We were trying to show the evolution of an addict from an “if these walls could talk” kind of way. There is supreme loneliness here, and she had a constant desire to be somewhere that she wasn’t.”

“What I love about season one is that we chose three women who didn’t want to be in The White House. Betty is kicking and screaming. Michelle is afraid of what could happen to her family. And Eleanor wonders why she is there if she’s not going to be the president. A lot of this shows the burden of standing beside someone and not being able to be comfortable in your own agency. That’s the most obvious example of that is with Betty. Her biggest worry about naming it The Betty Ford Center was that she would relapse and then how it could be named The Betty Ford Center? She didn’t know if she had the persona strength for that. It would’ve been a huge embarrassment for her and the notion for drug and alcohol recovery. She finds her voice through the pain of addiction. That’s an incredible victory, I think.”

Schulman added how frustrating it was for women of the 1970s to be dismissed by medical professionals. There are many men and women who are still coping with the repercussions of addiction from bad advice from people who couldn’t take the time to explore the issues.

“Betty Friedan’s book said to an entirely silent nation, ‘Are you feeling what I’m feeling? You’re smart and capable and you have nothing to do. Because we have washing machines and milkmen and all these appliances, you have nothing to do but something to add?’ The whole nation said yes and asked if we could talk about it. But the male population, expressed in the doctor who diagnosis Betty, only tells her, ‘It must be so tiring to do spring cleaning.’ It was so much of a gender schism, and when you combine that with the lack of knowledge and recklessness of prescriptive drugs, it’s a disaster combination for women.”

Schulman was terrified of including the Obamas for several reasons. We miss them so much, so she was worried about disappointing fans of such a beloved family. The scenes between Viola Davis and O-T Fagbenle, as Michelle and Barack, don’t destroy the image we have of them as much as it enhances them. They are untouchable presences, but seeing them spar at one another in the privacy of their own home gives them more humanity. It doesn’t take anything away.

“There was so much pressure. They have been enormously protective of their personal lives, and I applaud that. It’s more dangerous to invent and have conjecture who are in process of their lives, and they have a lot more living to do. That’s tricky. The nostalgia drove us, and that’s tricky too since you need conflict. We couldn’t invent conflict. We all believe that they are a loving family, so we wanted to focus on their antagonists being their Blackness. It wasn’t something else like drug addiction or sublimating a gay lifestyle like in the other storylines. Being the first Black family to live in a White House that was built by slaves. The reason why the arc peaks when they are about to leave The White House, and Michelle comes back from working out with the punching pads. Barack says to her something about having one Black family in The White House and now the people vote for Trump. He says, ‘That’s not America,’ and she says, ‘Yes, it is.’ He has an incredible belief that the world can change and she has a more grounded experience in distrusting politics and authority because it’s biased and white. It was terrifying to include them because we love them so much. We want them back. But we wanted to make them a micro chasm in a large struggle. We also wanted to show the power of social media in politics, because, before that, we didn’t have that.”

The First Lady is streaming on Showtime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j36nGWGC5FI