A Gutsy move: Hillary and Chelsea Clinton get real on their new TV series

Heidi Gutman/Apple TV+ Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton for EW.

It's almost impossible to go into an interview with Hillary and Chelsea Clinton without some preconceptions. They have, after all, been on the global stage for the better part of four decades, with scenes from their public lives as familiar (if not as mundane) as our own: a preteen Chelsea on her father Bill's campaign trail; the presidential family walking hand in hand on the White House lawn, post-Lewinsky scandal; Hillary's emotional concession speech after the 2016 election.

So it's a bit surreal to sit waiting for the Clinton women to join a Zoom chat about their new Apple TV+ show Gutsy — so much so that when their polished, smiling images appear on the screen, it initially looks like a promotional still, a digital placeholder to contemplate until the pair signs on. That is, until Hillary shifts and bellows "Hello!" in her distinctive cadence, reminding us of the actual person behind the public persona.

It's a recurring theme in their eight-part docuseries (premiering Sept. 9), where the Clintons sit down with prominent female stars, activists, and community leaders to talk about how they're making positive change in the world — but also pulls back the curtain on two very famous, very private and very, yes, gutsy women themselves. "That was the big goal," says Gutsy executive producer/showrunner Anna Chai (The Mind of a Chef, Anthony Bourdain's The Layover). "We think we know Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, but it was such a lovely surprise to find out they are funny and warm and up for anything. Once we got a little sense of that in the initial pre-production, we really wanted to put that front and center, because that's a side of them that's playful and personal that most of the world has never seen."

But is that possible? To get a glimpse of something real and unexpected from a thoroughly media-savvy mother and daughter who have lived under the glare of public scrutiny for years? On Gutsy, yes. And ironically, the way that happens — as you watch them interacting with dozens of women, rich and poor, young and old, famous and not — is they keep the focus (defying the reality TV rulebook) squarely off themselves.

"I was nervous," admits former First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, and presidential candidate Hillary, 74. "Being in front of the camera in this series was kind of a leap of faith for me. It was outside my comfort zone. But doing it with Chelsea was both a great way to come together around stuff we have talked about since she was a little girl. I wasn't alone, she wasn't alone. We were in it together."

"We work on our relationship," says author and public health advocate Chelsea, 42, who — full disclosure — also sits on the Board of Trustees of IAC, which owns EW parent company Dotdash Meredith. "We are very open and honest, and we love having new experiences together. So in some ways this did feel quite organic to have these new experiences and conversations."

Interjects Hillary: "But not in front of the camera."

The docuseries grew out of their 2019 best-seller The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience. The TV version was announced in December 2020 and began prep in April 2021, with the Clintons executive producing under their HiddenLight production banner. The globetrotting production (locations include Paris, New York City, and Little Rock, Ark.) was a massive undertaking, incorporating a large crew, celebrity guests, the Secret Service, and strict COVID protocols. ("Thankfully, we had no COVID cases at any point in the many months of working on this," says Chelsea.)

Though Hillary and Chelsea have years of on-camera experience between the two of them, they found the TV-making process quite daunting. "I've been interviewed, I don't know, a million times," says Hillary. "But never have I been the interviewer. Never have I been involved in the setup and the production and the camera angles and everything that is so complicated, but it's all behind the scenes. And so, for me, this was an incredible experience to step beyond anything I'd ever done before — to really watch the art of making something. And I loved that part of it." Adds Chelsea: "I had interviewed people before on camera, on podcasts, in a myriad of different ways, but I had never been part of anything of this scale or scope."

The gap between the Clintons' experience and the elements that are necessary to make compelling TV sometimes posed a challenge. "You can be a good public speaker, but that doesn't mean that you're going to be someone who can drive a conversation in this type of storytelling," says Chai. So the showrunner told the episode directors — which include Ted Lasso's MJ Delaney and Oscar-winning documentarian Cynthia Wade — to not hold back on guiding the pair. "'You're going to have to tell the Clintons if they're doing something wrong or if you need them to do something differently,'" Chai recalls telling them. "And one of the things that I loved about the Clintons is that they were very vocal. Like, 'Look, there are some things that are not normal for me to do, so you have to help me with it or tell me what you need.' They wanted to be good at it. Some people say that, but don't really mean it. [But] they were eager for feedback."

The feedback extended to the guests, which include Megan Thee Stallion, Kim Kardashian, Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, Amber Ruffin, Jane Goodall, Gloria Steinem, and another mother-daughter duo, Kate Hudson and Goldie Hawn — as well as everyday heroes like firefighter Jackie Michelle Martinez and gun violence activist Shannon Watts. (Hillary says they came close to booking Cher and, before her March 2022 death, Madeleine Albright.) Hillary and Chelsea left it to their guests to decide what to do during their conversations, which resulted in painting poolside with Megan, tango dancing with Hudson and Hawn, and Mexican food and margaritas with a group of anti-hate activists (as seen in the exclusive first-look trailer below).

"We had not met [Megan] before," Hillary says of the "Savage" rapper, who graduated from Texas Southern University in December 2021 — in the midst of her rising fame — with a B.S. in health administration. "And what she wanted to do was just sit there and talk to us while we were each painting. There was something so impressive to me about how she was showing us a part of her that wasn't in the glam and the moment of celebrity. It was, 'Here's who I am. And here's what I care about.' We talked about her dream of taking care of people better with their health as they age — and I don't think most people would've ever even imagined that about her before we had our conversation."

Kardashian was also a surprise. "I have long admired Kim's commitment to criminal justice reform," says Chelsea. "I knew she'd gone to law school. I knew that she was doggedly committed to these issues, and to individual incarcerated people's efforts to lessen their sentences or fully commute their sentences. But to hear her talk about how this is such a significant part of her identity, of how she thinks about her role as a celebrity, of how thoughtful she is about where her celebrity can help and where it may be harmful, how vulnerable she was in acknowledging she didn't know what the DOJ stood for…. I think she shared that anecdote because she wants other people to think, 'Okay, I may not know what all the acronyms are, but if I think something is wrong, I can learn more and then be a more effective advocate.' You don't have to know everything at the beginning of your journey as an activist; by definition, you won't. I just was really impressed by how not only important this is to her, but how important this is to her definition of who she is."

(Fun fact: Chelsea, an avid runner and hip-hop fan, deleted Kardashian's ex-husband Kanye West from her workout playlist. "I've had to let go of Kanye," she says. "Just the way that he has treated Kim Kardashian, the way he has talked about women, is unconscionable to me. That was some of my favorite running music and I have removed it from my music library.")

Perhaps one of the reasons they're able to get this kind of insight from their guests is because of their interviewing style. One thing that's quickly apparent while watching Hillary and Chelsea's conversations with all the Gutsy women is how much they listen and are genuinely curious about their subjects. They are not jumping in to interrupt, or entertain (though their banter is plenty entertaining). Keeping the focus on the interview subject doesn't sound like a groundbreaking concept, but when paired with the Clintons being, well, the Clintons, it had a powerful effect on their guests.

"They were just listening so hard," says Ruffin, 43, who invited Hillary and Chelsea into The Amber Ruffin Show's writers' room, a.k.a. her New York apartment. "And if you're any lady anywhere, nobody trying to listen to you — especially not a person of that stature, to this degree, being this interested in your little ramblings. When I found out that they wanted to talk to me, it was such a nice feeling because it forces you to have to be like, 'Oh yeah, I did something that is noteworthy, so much so that these two people, both of whom I consider out of my league in every way, noticed.' And that felt great."

"It was really nice to be human with someone who has just been, like, supernatural," notes Rev. Whittney Ijanaten, a wedding officiant who asked Hillary some tough questions about her marriage with Bill. "It wasn't Rev. Whittney to Secretary Clinton, it was woman to woman — I want to know how was it that you were able to stay? I was very grateful for the connection, for what they saw in me and how our conversation, once it got together, could be some magic."

Heidi Gutman/Apple TV+ Hillary and Chelsea Clinton

Celebrating these women — as opposed to bashing the patriarchy or spiraling into negativity — was key for the Clintons. "We didn't want them to feel like, heaven forbid, there was some sort of an expectation or order or script," says Hillary. "We wanted literally to have just a conversation like if we were in our kitchen or sitting at a picnic table, whatever it might be. In each case, we felt like we were really getting to know that person. And we were trying to make that person really feel that she was the most important person. Chelsea and I were here to really showcase them."

Though the vibe of the series is definitely celebratory, that doesn't mean every episode is rah-rah, kumbaya, you-go-girl fizz. The Clintons, no strangers to public criticism, talk about some of their personal low points: Hillary calls her decision to stand by husband Bill after his infidelity "the gutsiest decision I ever made". Chelsea, now a married mother of three, remembers how it felt to have her physical appearance made fun of (on Saturday Night Live, no less!) as a child.

"People are expecting certain things from the Clintons, and so we wanted to lean into that a little bit, but also let them flex in other things that they care about but hadn't honestly been really vocal about," says Chai. "Both the Secretary and Chelsea have been in the spotlight for many decades, and it hasn't always been kind and it hasn't always been fair. And there's a question of: How do we handle this in a way that's relatable, and gives a path forward [and] gives people some guidance about how to handle it with a smile and your head high? And again, this idea of hope. They wanted [the show to have] this feeling that there are still things to be grateful for, there's still things to laugh about, there's still things that we can be excited about."

So will there be a Gutsy season 2? While there are no immediate plans, Chai says there are many stories the Clintons were interested in that they couldn't include in the eight episodes. Explains Hillary: "It's fair to say that we'd love it if there were [another season], but that's going to have to be discussed later." As for the big screen, the pair executive produced the upcoming documentary In Her Hands, about Afghanistan's first female (and youngest) mayor, Zarifa Ghafari, which will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival Sept. 9 and debut on Netflix Nov. 16.

Female empowerment, community uplift, and legacy building aside, did we mention that the Clintons are pretty darn funny?

"Before they came by, we were like, 'Do not act the way you normally act…we cannot be our normal selves,'" says Ruffin of the ground rules she gave her writing staff ahead of the Clintons' visit. "And then those two goofuses showed up. They just jumped head first into goofiness. That was, I would say, the most surprising thing, that they're silly. It'll never not be hilarious: Hillary Clinton and her child were in my house."

Still, some of the best moments in Gutsy come when Hillary and Chelsea (or "Chels" as her mother calls her) are hanging between interviews or traveling to another location. In one episode, the duo get into a car to drive around their old hometown of Little Rock, and Hillary mistakes a microphone for a stick shift. "You just haven't, like, been in the front seat of a car in a really long time," Chelsea tells her mother during our interview when asked about whether there were any particularly eye-rolling moments during filming. "And, seriously, I can't believe you said that [about the mic] on camera. And I'm embarrassed for you, but it's fine."

In another episode, Hillary recalls with horror a time when 16-year-old Chelsea called her from the mall to inform her that she was getting her ears pierced... but leaves us hanging as to whether Chelsea actually got the studs. ("No, no, no, she didn't!" says Hillary when asked about it in a phone call a few days after our Zoom. "She didn't get it at that time and then later when she got older, she made her own decision.")

Those candid moments give us more of a sense of their mother-daughter dynamic — affectionate, supportive, honest — than anything else they've done in their years of public life. And that, in the end, is what helps amplify the other women's stories in Gutsy. Because we trust the telling of their tales comes from two gutsy mothers who ultimately want to make the world a better place. Not just for their daughters, but for all daughters.

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