Over this past weekend, I attended Sundance Film Festival and previewed Hillary, Hulu’s upcoming four-part docuseries that gives everyone a behind-the-scenes look at Hillary Clinton through her personal life and public career over the years. It’s also intertwined with footage from her 2016 presidential campaign (2,000 hours of footage was captured from the campaign trail alone), and a glimpse of the 35 hours Clinton sat for interviews with director Nanette Burstein. Some of the featured footage was even new to Clinton, who joked at Sundance, “I knew that people weren’t happy with me about universal health care, but I had forgotten that I had been burned in effigy.” Featuring interviews from her campaign team, college friends, press, rivals, husband Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama himself, Burstein provides the audience with a moving and motivating portrait of the former first lady, senator, secretary of state, and presidential candidate. After sitting through the premiere, I can tell you that many members of the audience had tears in their eyes, waiting in anticipation for director Burnstein to eventually introduce Clinton to the stage.
The series kicks off with Clinton’s Chicago childhood, where at one point she threatened her father and she’d run away and marry a Democrat (scandalous, I know). She recalled running for student council, where the boys would always win but immediately rush to her asking for help after the fact. The series then follows her transformative time at Wellesley College, where she was the president of Young Republicans for one year before deciding her values no longer aligned with the Republican party. She went on to deliver the commencement address her senior year. After graduating, Clinton recalled the harassment she received when taking the bar exam for law school, and making waves as the first female partner in the Little Rock, Ark, Rose Law Firm. She eventually became the first lady of Arkansas.
Though sexism surrounded Clinton her whole life, her demonization for being too serious, cold and calculated felt especially striking. People scrutinized her lack of makeup and her hairdo as not being “soft” enough. The demands never let up. Later, Clinton revealed she added up all the time she spent doing makeup during her 2016 campaign as 35 full days. “Honest to God, do you think anybody talked to Bernie Sanders about his goddamn shoes?” she groaned in footage from a 2016 Democratic Debate. We see her working as a lawyer for children’s rights, and we also watch the beginning of Bill Clinton’s rise in politics. Her long history of political controversy and intense media following began here, as she made the decision against taking her husband’s last name and indirectly insulted stay-at-home moms when she told the press she wouldn’t stay home “baking cookies and drinking tea.” The film doesn’t skim over the controversies either.
“You sit in that chair, and you’ve told the filmmaker, ‘Yeah, nothing’s off limits and you can ask anything you want.’ And then she does,” Clinton told the audience with a chuckle. The film follows her time in the White House, and touches on scandals including—but not limited to—the Whitewater scandal during Bill Clinton’s first administration, the email server, Wall Street speech transcripts, Benghazi, and Monica Lewinsky. “Even if things are disproved, the accusations are remembered,” Clinton sighed. “I’m the most investigated innocent person in America.”
Over half of the series focuses on Clinton being the closest woman to win the presidency and the devastation that came with the loss. Clinton explained in the documentary: “I was totally emotionally wrecked. I felt like I let everybody down. I worried that he wouldn’t rise to the occasion. That all the forces he’d unleashed had been rewarded. It made me sick to my stomach. It didn’t make sense.” She went on to recall how difficult it was not to cry during her concession speech, and immediately collapsing in the back of the van when she was out of the public eye. “It was like a death,” she explained.
The series provides insight on why Clinton might be a better government official than a candidate. Knowing policy like the back of her hand didn’t help when Americans were in search of a definite, uncalculated answer—much like the answers Bernie Sanders was providing. Hillary confessed she suffers “from the responsibility gene” and refuses to make promises she can’t keep. Interviewees of the film often point out that people forget Clinton was a leader of the feminist revolution, and often that she was too right, too soon. Looking back at the 2016 election outcome, Clinton hopes people will not see a loss, but a turning point in history. Clinton wants to be the flame that lights the fuse for change. The uproar and undying fight from young women across the country proves no one is backing down, including Clinton.
Much of the Q&A after the premiere was centered around the current election and the Democratic candidates, as the Iowa caucus is coming up on Feb. 3. “Do we have 35 hours?” Clinton laughed alongside her audience when asked her thoughts of the ongoing impeachment trials for Donald Trump. “I hope that this will haunt [Republicans], not only politically, but historically,” she said. “I find it absolutely beyond my understanding why they are so cowed, so terrified, to do what most of them know they should do.” Clinton later added that the only way to undo the damage done by the Trump presidency was to have a Democrat win the next election. If Trump is reelected, she said, the state of the nation is “irreparable.”
When asked about her recent comments about Bernie Sanders, she insisted, “Look, people can support whoever they want to support, but once we have a nominee, close ranks.” Clinton gave a nod to the women still running in the presidential campaign, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), but made it clear, “I will work hard for whoever our democratic nominee is…the number one priority for any American is to retire Donald Trump. Period.”
Overall, Hillary is a deeply moving and emotional experience for the audience and those appearing in the series. It reminds us that Clinton is more than the controversies, losses, or the cold, dehumanized person the media has presented her to be — she is a trailblazer, a feminist icon, and an unbreakable woman. Earlier in the documentary, Clinton recalled a story about being asked what she wants on her gravestone. Her quick reply was, “She’s not nearly as good or as bad as people say about her.” All four episodes will stream on Hulu March 6.