Viola Davis doesn't come across as an actor who's easily intimidated. So it's a bit surprising to hear her reveal how daunted she was by the task of playing Michelle Obama in "The First Lady," which celebrates the life of three White House icons.
"I'm not going to lie. I was terrified," Davis said during a virtual news conference with TV critics in February. "I think I listened to her podcasts probably over a hundred times and still felt terrified. I had the insurmountable task of everyone knowing who Michelle Obama is. Everybody has claimed ownership of her. Everybody has a time period where they loved her hair or hated her hair or loved her eyebrows or hated her eyebrows, and they feel like they own her."
Davis' performance isn't perfect. She's mesmerizing when it's time to roar but struggles with nailing down Obama's lighter side. But the 10-part series, debuting at 9 p.m. ET Sunday on Showtime, still ends up being a showcase for the Oscar and Tony winner, as well as her co-stars.
Michelle Pfeiffer is so good as Betty Ford that you'll wish Congress would pass a bill forcing her to work more. Her opening scene, in which her character dances across a porch to Harry Nilsson's "Coconut," provides as much insight about a historic figure as Ken Burns gets across in an hour of old photos.
Gillian Anderson gives Eleanor Roosevelt quiet dignity and a sense of sadness.
"I don't know whether I've ever played a woman who didn't have confidence before," said Anderson, who has won Emmys for her work in "The X-Files" and "The Crown." "It was fascinating to embody someone who felt moved to do good work not necessarily because of feeling like she had a right to have a voice or a right to have a place. She did it out of pure selflessness, and so that was fascinating to explore."
Each performance is so captivating that you sometimes wish the series would have chosen just one subject to zero in on, rather than bouncing back and forth among the three women over the course of more than a century.
But producers were keen to connect the dots between their shared struggles and triumphs.
"These three women had fully independent lives before they went into the White House. And then suddenly they were told to pick china patterns and stay in the background," said executive producer Cathy Schulman, who hopes to explore the lives of other first ladies in future seasons. "They had to find their way through that system to have impact and have their voices shine again. That's what they shared."
The approach is bound to pay off — expect the series to have a major presence at the Emmys — even though Davis knows Obama may not approve of all her acting choices.
"Something I always say, even to my husband, is 'Listen, if someone were to do a bio of my life 70 years from now and they spoke to everyone that possibly came into contact with me, you'd only know 40% of me,'" she said. "So, yes, there's a huge amount of fear, but that's what we live for as artists. It's a huge exercise in letting go, and it's a huge exercise in transformation."
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