Hillary Clinton reflects on 'vicious cycle' of her public image as Hillary doc trailer debuts
Hulu has nothing but respect for Hillary Clinton.
Ahead of taking the political icon’s new four-part project, Hillary, to the Sundance Film Festival later this month, the streaming giant debuted the series’ first full-length trailer Friday morning, shortly after Clinton appeared at the Television Critics Association winter press tour to field questions about allowing Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nanette Burstein chronicle her life.
“There was nothing off limits,” Clinton told the TCA crowd gathered at the Langham Huntington hotel ballroom in Pasadena. “This did not start out the film it ended up being. It started out as a campaign documentary. Because we had about 1,700 hours of behind-the-scenes footage… [the story] needs to be told. I’m not running for anything, I’m not in office, so I said sure, let’s give it a try and off we went.”
As highlighted in the trailer, the docuseries chronicles Clinton’s campaign during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, which she ultimately lost to Donald Trump. Filmmakers received unprecedented access to the former secretary of state, her family (including husband Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton), friends, and journalists offering intimate impressions of Clinton and her 30-year presence on the national political stage.
“I did around 35 hours of interviewing,” Clinton further revealed during the TCA presentation, adding that the process of creating the series forced her to reflect on how she became a “Rorschach test for women and women’s roles” in politics when she burst onto the scene as her husband first ran for president, and the “vicious cycle” of scrutiny placed on her personal life when she first rose to prominence. “There’s a scene in the [series] which I forgot about with me being burned in effigy for wanting healthcare. “The fact that I was the first First Lady of my generation and had been working ever since I was a young woman in the professional workforce, you don’t have to like everybody in public life so I’m sure there were personal reactions but I think it was even more rooted in the time we were in and the challenging impression that people had of me at that time and who I was and what I cared about and what I did.”
Hillary debuts March 6 on Hulu. Watch the series’ full-length trailer above.
Additional reporting by Sydney Bucksbaum.
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