Would Showtime’s “The First Lady” work better if it hadn’t cast such famously recognizable actors to play Michelle Obama, Betty Ford and Eleanor Roosevelt? Who’s to say, but I found it more difficult than usual to suspend my disbelief over the course of this 10-part series, which toggles between the three eras of each woman.
Projects like this need big names to get the green light, so here we are, with fully committed, if not always successful, performances from Viola Davis (as Michelle), Michelle Pfeiffer (as Betty) and Gillian Anderson (as Eleanor) in service of an approach that is more history class diorama than the stuff of riveting drama. Any one of these presidential first ladies could have — should have — been the subject of a stand-alone series, and threading their stories together feels arbitrary except for the fact that they collectively span the last century or so, leaping forward in three-decade increments with a focus on the Roosevelts in the ‘30s and ‘40s, the Fords in the ‘70s and the Obamas in the early 2000s.
It’s always fun to speculate about the marriages of public people — what are their conversations like in private? — and that’s primarily what the series has going for it. Early in the campaign, we see Michelle rushing to her Chicago home, concerned when her daughters inform her Secret Service agents are now installed at the house. Her husband is not even the nominee yet and he needs this level of protection? Barack (played by O-T Fagbenle) tries to lighten the mood as he coolly strolls into their kitchen: “Boom! Your man kicked the Secret Service outta the house. I said, ‘Look, fellas, I don’t care how many guns you got, my wife doesn’t like it — get to steppin.’ Now, strictly speaking, they can’t leave the property …” She’s not having it: “It’s not funny, Barack.” It’s not the only time his political aspirations and her focus on practical realities will come into conflict.
First-time show creator Aaron Cooley and showrunner Cathy Schulman (a seasoned producer; this is her first credit as a writer) take a reverential, sometime guileless approach in their portrayal of power structures, particularly as they relate the highest elected office in the nation. Michelle, Betty and Eleanor are women who pushed against the status quo in all kinds of interesting ways, but they also upheld it, and those uncomfortable complexities go unexplored. Showtime is calling the series a “revelatory reframing,” but that’s far too grand a description for a show that has little interest in challenging assumptions or the official record.
Hair and costume goes a long way toward conjuring the right silhouette, and of the three, Pfeiffer fares the best because her interpretation feels the most human-scaled. Both Anderson and Davis have a different sort of challenge, bearing the weight of women who have become icons. Interestingly, both end up rooting their performances in the set of their mouth — Anderson through false teeth, Davis through a pursed-lip expression. Pfeiffer, on the other hand, wears the characterization lightly, to her great advantage. Maybe it’s because, as portrayed here, Betty generally has a lighter approach overall despite (or maybe because of) her reliance on alcohol and pills. She wasn’t without her struggles — there’s a terrifically sharp confrontation late at night with her husband (Aaron Eckhart as Gerald Ford) about his decision to pardon Richard Nixon — but in terms of what it means to be a politician’s wife, Betty has a sense of humor about the absurdity of it all, compared to the more tension-filled ambitions and exasperations we see Eleanor and Michelle cycle through during their husbands’ tenure in office.
There’s the issue of Anderson, who is miscast. Physically, she’s just wrong for the role at 5-foot-3 (Eleanor was 5-11) and the bone structure of her face, though exquisite, doesn’t lend itself to shapeshifting into unglamorous figures; I felt the same about her turn as Margaret Thatcher on “The Crown.” She’s a tremendous actor, but these roles don’t play to her strengths and the resulting performances have the feel of parody.
Davis fares better, nailing Michelle’s vocal cadence (if not the Chicago tonal quality of her voice) but more importantly, she embodies a woman of formidable intelligence who has little patience for political gamesmanship. When she walks into the White House for the first time, she clocks that most of the employees who maintain the residence are Black and she acknowledges each and every one of them. Then her eyes land on a painting that’s a few hundred years old, depicting white military officers and, off the side, a crouching Black man. She stares in quiet, disgusted contemplation until Laura Bush (Kathleen Garrett) pipes in: “Luckily, you get to choose your own art.”
The Obama portions also benefit — in real life and on the screen — from the presence of Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson (Regina Taylor), who is unreservedly supportive without sugarcoating a thing. After that tense conversation with Barack in their Chicago kitchen, Michelle goes to her mother’s house to take a moment and think things through. “I’m just terrified my girls are going to see their daddy’s picture hanging on someone’s wall, like another dead Black hero,” she says. “Baby,” her mother replies, “it seems you’ve got two choices and both of them ending in that man doing what he’s gonna do.” The show frames Michelle’s objections primarily as a safety issue, which isn’t quite accurate; the real Michelle Obama has said she never would have chosen this life for herself, in part, because “politics felt mean.” That nuance is missing here.
Years later, when Hillary Clinton is running for president, she asks (through an intermediary) for Michelle’s help on the campaign trail. Michelle is less than enthused: “We’re not invited to the table until there’s a crisis with white women and then we’re in it together,” she tells her mother. “But when we ask for their support in anything we need, we get: It’s a Black issue.” Marian considers this. “I’m not wrong,” Michelle says. To which her mother tells her of Donald Trump: “If he wins, it seems to me it’s going to be a problem for more than just white women.”
I can’t deny the satisfaction of seeing Michelle take Rahm Emanuel (Michael Aronov) down a notch or two during his brief turn as White House chief of staff. And her high school alma mater Whitney M. Young Magnet High School does not come off well either, with a guidance counselor attempting to steer a teenage Michelle away from Princeton, in favor of less prestigious schools.
There are also moments of sardonic humor. There’s a priceless look Michelle gives Hillary when she arrives at a campaign event and is nearly brushed off before insisting the candidate acknowledge the value of Michelle’s presence. Or the planning session for Betty Ford’s addiction treatment center that’s capped off with tequila sunrises — she abstains but the group is happy to indulge. I don’t know if this really happened, it has the ring of wild truth, though.
But 10 episodes in, you don’t come away feeling you know the stories of these women any better, any deeper, than you already did. The series ends on a rousing note, which gives it the feel of a vanity project rather than an interrogation of newsmakers. Their stories are not in meaningful conversation with one another. But then, the show itself is not in meaningful conversation with history itself.
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'THE FIRST LADY'
2 stars (out of 4)
Where to watch: Premieres at 9 p.m. ET Sunday on Showtime
