Viola Davis and Gillian Anderson talked about their roles as Michelle Obama and Eleanor Roosevelt in “The First Lady”

“They refused to be the woman behind the man,” Viola Davis summarized what Michelle Obama, Betty Ford and Eleanor Roosevelt, the first three ladies of the Paramount+ limited series The First Lady, have in common. “They could easily be that, for four, eight years: simply excluding themselves from history, in the shadows. And I have no doubt that they were all encouraged to be the discreet first lady behind the man.”

Davis (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Suicide Squad), who played Obama, participated in a press conference with media from Latin America, Asia and Australia along with Gillian Anderson (The Crown, The X-Files), who played Roosevelt. The meeting was not attended by Michelle Pfeiffer, whose Betty Ford has been unanimously praised by critics in the United States. They are three first ladies who left a strong mark on the country's collective imagination: three women who managed, in that influential but powerless role, to raise their voices and develop their projects with a high impact on citizens.

“It's overwhelming when you enter the White House,” Davis continued. “How do you have a will? How do you have autonomy? How do you set your limits? How can you not mess with your husband's things? And also how are you yourself?” Indeed, the building offers limited space together with abundant and relentless scrutiny. But the three first ladies chosen by the show's creator, Aaron Cooley, along with director Susanne Bier found a way to “express themselves,” Anderson added. “They found a platform where they could be seen, heard and respected, where they felt they could be themselves, fight for the things that seemed most important to them, be valued and leave a mark.”

Michelle Obama's experience is still fresh: she was first lady while Barack Obama (in the series, O.T. Fagbenle) was in the US presidency, between 2008 and 2016. But the other cases are less well-known in the world, although no less fascinating.

Betty Ford was the wife of Congressman Gerald Ford, president of the lower house in 1973 when, following the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew, she became the wife of the vice president and, very soon after, when Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, first lady. Eleanor Roosevelt was the woman who held this role the longest, between 1933 and 1945, because the rules of re-election were different; Franklin D. Roosevelt's governments took place in especially difficult times: the Great Depression and World War II.

Aaron Eckhart played Gerald Ford and Kiefer Sutherland played Roosevelt.

“Both from observing the stories and from deepening Eleanor's experience, I feel that, to this day, that of the first lady is an almost thankless job,” said Anderson, who came from playing an almost opposite role: that of the powerful Margaret Thatcher.

“I don't think this series has changed my opinion of the role of the first lady, but what it did was amplify, as Gillian said, how ungrateful it is,” Davis added. And how terrifying it is. Nobody likes to be put in a fish tank: life is difficult, you make mistakes, you are messy. And for them everything is under scrutiny: the clothes you choose, how you wear them, what you say, how you do it even if it's not something hot.

The reviews of The First Lady agreed on two points. The first: the narrative structure, which over 10 episodes tells these three lives far apart in time, fails to add more complexity with flashbacks to the childhood and youth of these women. The second: Davis, Anderson and Pfeiffer's performances are “among the best on television of the year” (NPR) and “some of the best of their respective careers” (Decider).

Acting requires different strategies when a role represents someone real. “In the case of a fictitious person, it is you who must create a human being of flesh and blood, three-dimensional,” Anderson explained. “You have to fill all the targets, you can invent whatever you want. But if it is someone known to everyone, you have to go carefully and respectfully.”

Davis added: “The challenge is that you can know the facts of the story but not all the personal information behind the facts. Completing that becomes very difficult because you can't just invent; or yes, but there will be repercussions. For me it was the most challenging part. When acting, the big question is to show yourself as a private being in public.”

She also carried the extra burden of playing a woman with whom she spoke on the phone on some occasions to prepare her portrait: “I felt restricted and I was very afraid. She is alive and much loved. We couldn't put anything in the script just because it seemed dynamic: its repercussions would reverberate much more than those of Eleanor and Betty. During the launch of her book [bestseller Becoming] Michelle Obama said: 'I can't say anything because my opinion can change the way the nation sees us, it can make a program or a law fail to thrive. ' And I felt that kind of restriction on paper.”

The cross between biography and political thriller defined the hybrid genre of The First Lady: “I think it fits very well between the two,” Anderson said. “It's a mix. All three plot lines are completely immersed in the White House and their private lives, also in the years before they came to power. We see some very, very difficult decisions that presidents had to make and how that affected their relationship with their wives. And vice versa: how the decisions that the first ladies made affected their husbands and potentially the presidency.”

Davis added that politics works as “a framework that surrounds them and shapes them as human beings” because it is the world in which the lives of these characters take place, “but at the end of the day we have these women.” The series, he concluded, “is about politics but also about people, and that's what our work is about: otherwise, you could watch a documentary or read a book.”

In addition to the sextet representing the presidents and their wives, Dakota Fanning as Susan Elizabeth Ford, Regina Taylor as Marian Shields Robinson, Michelle Obama's mother; Judy Greer as Nancy Howe, Ellen Burstyn as Sara Delano Roosevelt, Jackie Earle Haley as Louis McHenry Howe and Kate Mulgrew as Susan Sher. The First Lady is a Lionsgate Television production for Showtime and featured Cathy Schulman as showrunner.

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