The First Lady begins by inviting us to consider the broader meaning of portraiture. I doubt that’s what the authors intended by depicting Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson), Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Michelle Obama (Viola Davis) sitting for their official paintings, each in their era. As they are, they are entry points into what should be insightful explorations of their lives, told in a 10-episode pass.
Still, this brief sequence invites us to reflect on what a sanctioned portrait, chosen and informed with the subject’s wishes in mind, tells us about the person sitting for it—that is, nothing they don’t want us to do to see it. Regardless of what Michelle Obama’s portraitist Amy Sherald (Tiffany Hobbs) intends when she says, “I’m interested in the real” while photographing her, it’s impossible to fully authenticate a person in two dimensions.
We’ve seen better examples of what “The First Lady” does in “Mrs. America” tries to do.
TV is a better medium for this, even if a series doesn’t sum up everything about a person’s truth. The First Lady is clearly an unauthorized biographical drama. I can’t think of a couple more connected to the media world than the Obamas, who see it as the definitive narrative of Michelle’s story. Her Netflix documentary Becoming, based on her memoir, continues to serve that purpose for now.
We’ve seen better examples of what “The First Lady” does in “Mrs. America,” and yes, even in “Juliet” this year, despite the liberties taken in depicting private moments or other unfamiliar parts of her subjects. Life. Their colorful means of fictionalizing the major shifts in history help us better appreciate the people who created them.
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Also consider how “The Crown” exploits the opacity of his subjects’ reputations to construct his own version of life as a British king, making Queen Elizabeth II and her family vulnerable souls worthy of being compassionate or to be despised, or in both cases understanding. Whether the real Windsors are truly like their Netflix counterparts matters less than whether we believe in the humanity of their TV versions.
Each episode wastes the firepower in front of the camera.
“The First Lady” never achieves such roundness, despite the impassioned performances of her immensely talented leads. If you were hoping that Davis, Anderson, and Pfeiffer could plumb the complex inner workings of these legendary presidential wives, it’s far from the case.
Instead, each episode squanders on-camera firepower by putting its actors in hot spots and turning points, rather than filling the open canvas with clues and clues as to who they are in the quieter moments. Seeing these women approach history as the person life has molded them into is more interesting than simply seeing how they react when insults and disasters land on their doorstep; we already know that part.
But for some reason, showrunner Cathy Schulman and the writers think we want to see Davis recreate that time when Michelle drove Fox News crazy by saying, “For the first time in my adult life, I’m really proud of my country because it’s what hope feels like is making a comeback”, without considering the life experiences that may have influenced this very honest, relatable statement.
Gillian Anderson as Eleanor Roosevelt in The First Lady (Daniel McFadden/SHOWTIME)We’re shown the beginning of Eleanor’s political marriage to Franklin D. Roosevelt (Kiefer Sutherland), without much mention of how his lack of affection hits her day by day, until she appropriately stumbles upon letters from his mistress Lucy Mercer.
Your stories just sort of. . . hang out together.
We’re introduced to Betty by watching Pfeiffer shake her to Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut” to hint at her drug problem early on. Eventually, the Republican first lady becomes a feminist working to pass the Equal Rights Amendment and a public face for breast cancer survivors. But she is presented as personifying a theme of a very special episode.
Your stories just sort of. . . stick together rather than serve as entry points that allow access to the real personalities behind the women we see in archive footage, photos and films. And every actor follows this unoriginal trail. Anderson embodies Eleanor Roosevelt’s determination to stand up for human rights, the working class and their anti-racist efforts. We see much of her stubbornness and private sadness, but little expression of Eleanor’s joy, apart from what she learns from her relationship with journalist Lorena Hickok (Lily Rabe), written here as Eleanor’s mistress.
Private moments shared by Michelle and Barack Obama (OT Fagbenle) allow for more humanity, probably because we regularly see them as an affectionate and loving couple. And yet it’s Malia (Lexi Underwood) who has to explain to her father the importance of publicly supporting LGBTQIA rights, as if he’d somehow missed the importance of getting his voice behind the cause before.
Kathleen Garrett as Laura Bush, Viola Davis as Michelle Obama and OT Fagbenle as Barack Obama in The First Lady (Jackson Lee Davis/SHOWTIME)None of the actors can be blamed for skimping on passion in their performances – we expect nothing less. But the Scriptures are not fit vessels to hold it. Hour after hour, the characters speak their way through attacks or a rupture, rather than relying on the actors’ emotional abilities to carry the plot.
As a result, some of them hover somewhere between celebrity impersonation and interpretation—mainly Davis, Anderson, and Fagbenle. So does Sutherland, though his FDR impression never quite measures up to the others’ grating irritation.
Playing a real person with distinctive mannerisms is a challenge, regardless of who is tasked with performing it.
Davis recently admitted to being afraid of what Michelle Obama would think of her performance, and the unfortunate effect of that nervousness is noticeable in the way she purses her lips to speak to Michelle or her sentences are awkward cuts off
Playing a real person with distinctive mannerisms is a challenge, regardless of who is tasked with fulfilling it. It’s so easy to overemphasize the way someone speaks or purses their lips to the point where close study becomes parody. Davis’ portrayal of Michelle takes up a long-term lease in this transitional neighborhood, vacillating between genuine relationship building and distractions.
Her impression isn’t nearly as overwhelming as Fagbenle’s close imitation of Barack Obama’s quirky speech patterns, which is both dead and over the top. Meanwhile, the actors playing the younger versions of the Obamas, Jayme Lawson and Julian De Niro, largely eschew imitations. It doesn’t take anything away from the scenes they share.
In fact, Lawson beautifully captures the grace of the future First Lady as she comes of age while she pushes aside the doubts and hurts of others. She is stunning in her work with Regina Taylor, who plays Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson, and Michael Potts, who plays her father, Fraser.
In many ways, Anderson has the more daunting task of bringing a unique perspective to a first lady who has starred in the likes of Greer Garson, Jane Alexander and Cynthia Nixon and in better productions. This production lets her down to the point that her performance sometimes struggles to draw attention away from her dentures.
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Of the three leads, Pfeiffer’s performance feels the freshest. Her performance also has enough power to take on the task of making Betty a reality and suits the actor who plays her younger version, Kristine Froseth, well.
Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford in The First Lady (Murray Close/SHOWTIME)
Of the three leads, Pfeiffer’s performance feels the freshest.
Pfeiffer captures Ford’s lithe persona, but she also presents the side of Betty, who resents her husband Gerald (Aaron Eckhart) for putting his political ambitions ahead of his marriage and family, and mourns the death of her dancing career. Pfeiffer’s Betty keeps a gentleness at her strength while at the same time sublimating an anger that roars magnificently to the surface as more of Gerald’s colleagues try to silence her. Froseth reminds us of the dancer that Betty was and provides a basis for her insistence on finding and using her voice as a President’s wife.
Points at which actions by previous First Ladies come through the tenures of succeeding ones are presented as connecting means as opposed to poignant bridges. Only once does that touch work as it should, when the Obamas watching a clip of Marian Anderson’s performance on the National Mall are presented as the culmination of Eleanor Roosevelt’s intervention in 1939, after the Daughters of the American Revolution gave her the performance were forbidden in Constitution Hall.
Part of the blame for the show’s pallid jumble of narrative choices falls to Schulman; other distractions such as those created by the performances could have been mitigated by Susanne Biers’ direction. In any case, the result is a web of biographies that seems chaotic and light.
Again, this is educational as it animate the difference between capturing a person’s likeness and uncovering the essential characteristics of a person’s life. One focuses on the line, the other is meticulous in emphasizing distinct gradations of shading and shadows.
In terms of biographical drama, it’s the difference between feeling like you know the people behind the story and having a TV version of an innocuous commemorative magazine profile you roll past on your way to the grocery store checkout. “The First Lady” is the latter: glossy and celebratory, but it pains me to say inconsequential — a word that should never be associated with the women who inspired this show.
“The First Lady” premieres Sunday, April 17 at 9 p.m. on Showtime. Watch a trailer for it via YouTube below.
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