LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The First Lady” presents three influential women, three acclaimed actors playing them, and a century of history encompassing wars…
LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The First Lady” presents three influential women, three acclaimed actors playing them, and a century of history encompassing wars, presidential scandal and America’s stubborn gender and race fault lines. The ambitious Showtime drama series proved an irresistible challenge for Oscar-winning director Susanne Bier. While its subjects — Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford and Michelle Obama — each have a “compelling and gripping” story, the sum is even greater, Bier said of her first biographical project. “It was interesting to me that it wasn’t one biopic,” Bier said in an interview. By focusing on first ladies of disparate experiences and eras, “in a way it puts women’s situation in the world very much in perspective.” “The First Lady,” debuting 9 p.m. EDT Sunday, stars Gillian Anderson as Eleanor Roosevelt, Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford and Viola Davis as Michelle Obama. Davis was an executive producer for the series, as were showrunner Cathy Schulman and Bier. In their younger iterations, the future first ladies are played by Eliza Scanlen (Roosevelt), Kristine Froseth (Ford) and Jayme Lawson (Obama). The presidents — secondary to their wives in this telling — are portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland as Franklin D. Roosevelt; Aaron Eckhart as Gerald Ford and O-T Fagbenle as Barack Obama. The series examines both personal and political chapters, but it is historical fiction and doesn’t pretend to be a documentary, Schulman said. “We had to imagine what happened in between the events and the things that have been written about,” she said during a panel discussion.
