Hillary Clinton on her favorite TV shows set in the political world
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As someone who has spent more than four decades in politics, Hillary Clinton could be forgiven for not wanting to consume fictional political dramas in her downtime. (In fact, she prefers HGTV when it comes to comfort bingeing.) But the former Secretary of State does have some on-the-nose favorites when it comes to TV shows set in her chosen profession.
"I liked Madam Secretary," Clinton says of the CBS show that starred Tea Leoni as Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord. "It started when I was Secretary and I thought it did a good job." (Apparently so: Clinton, along with fellow former Secretaries Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright, made a cameo on the show in 2018.)
During an interview for EW's cover story for Gutsy, the new Apple TV+ docuseries she cohosts with daughter Chelsea, Clinton shouted out some of her other Beltway-set faves. "I'm old enough that I love The West Wing, which was iconic, obviously," she says of the crackling Aaron Sorkin drama starring Bradley Whitford, Allison Janney, Martin Sheen, Janel Maloney, and Richard Schiff that ran on NBC from 1999-2006.
David M. Russell/CBS 'Madam Secretary' star Téa Leoni with former Secretaries Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, and Hillary Clinton
She also "couldn't help but watch some of the dark ones, like House of Cards, but it was so far from any reality," she says of the Netflix show that starred Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright as a ruthless, scheming Presidential couple. "I mean, West Wing was also unrealistic, but not so dark and so far gone. Madam Secretary I thought was fairly realistic."
One show she hasn't seen? The First Lady, the Showtime series that debuted earlier year featuring Viola Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Gillian Anderson as Michelle Obama, Betty Ford, and Eleanor Roosevelt, respectively. "I meant to see it, I didn't get to see it."
Understandable, given her recent run of creating entertainment, not just consuming it. Besides Gutsy, an eight-part docuseries (premiering Sept. 9), where she and Chelsea sit down with prominent female stars, activists, and community leaders to talk about how they're making positive change in the world, she is also executive producing (along with Chelsea under their HiddenLight banner) 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.
"I've been interviewed, I don't know, a million times," says Hillary on how film and TV-making is different from all of her media experience so far. "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."
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