Cate Blanchett makes a thunderous entrance as Phyllis Schlafly in Mrs. America premiere
TV Reviews Recap
It seems strange to start a miniseries of the who’s who of the 1970s women’s movement with Phyllis Schlafly, whose claim to fame is spiking the Equal Rights Amendment. She’s credited with starting the “war on women,” to the point that she helped turn the Republican Party’s fairly liberal (especially compared to today’s standards) gender and reproductive rights into the incredibly retro platform today. (Check out Schlafly’s obituary for more, unless you’re worried about spoilers.)
But as the first episode, titled “Phyllis,” shows, there’s something both compelling and creepy about following this woman. Only Cate Blanchett could sell the little faces Phyllis makes when no one’s looking—what she won’t say and can’t say. Her performance isn’t exactly eliciting sympathy; it’s just a masterwork in letting you read her mind without missing a beat. She has one of those moments in the beginning of the episode, during a fundraiser for Congressman Phil Crane. She walks on stage wearing a two-piece in honor of her husband, a major donor, to the cheering and jeering of the fellow donors. She walks on with a brilliant smile, but her face turns haunted as she walks back out.
The conflicted expression is gone by the time she’s back in the dressing room, where she and her fellow model/donor wives discuss Crane’s (played by James Marsden) run. Phyllis mentions her own recently failed run, and wilts slightly when Crane’s wife seems totally unimpressed. Crane visits them in the dressing room, which is reminiscent of another politician we all know so well nowadays. Phyllis appears on Crane’s show, where he promises to give her easy questions, while she bowls him over with her strictly realist foreign policy ideas. She dismisses SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) with the Soviet Union as dangerously diplomatic because the U.S., to her thinking, will be the only ones to comply. Crane is stunned, and in a perhaps different show, this is where Phyllis would get a talking-to about how things get done in this town.
Instead, Crane walks into her dressing room once again. There’s a moment where the audience is made to wonder if Phyllis is in danger with just Crane around. It doesn’t help that he calls her “electrifying” and a “star,” before he switches the sound guys’ access off. Instead, he encourages her to run for Congress a third time, invites her to a meeting in Washington, D.C., and tells her that she needs to convince Senator Goldwater (Peter MacNeill) to convince Nixon not to sign the SALT treaty.
Part of what makes Phyllis a compelling figure is the dark side of her confidence. As she speaks with a young pregnant women in the salon, she tells her the oft-repeated, but hardly conclusive adage that formula doesn’t have the same nutrients as breast-feeding (something I learned about in Adam Ruins Everything’s “Adam Ruins Having A Baby”). She talks with total conviction about something it’s likely she has no actual factual citations for, but believes in her gut is true. Her friend at the salon, Alice Macray (Sarah Paulson, who plays a composite character), is the one who says the Equal Rights Amendment will lead to the destruction of alimony and drafting women into the military, which is fundamentally not true of the amendment and also obscures the millions of rights it would wholly grant to women.
They discuss alimony more in depth, and husbands in general, specifically because Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne) doesn’t seem to need one and Phyllis wouldn’t have her political career without her husband. In contrast, Phyllis’ mother complains that her father didn’t make enough for her to be able to take care of herself after he’s gone. When Phyllis excitedly talks to her husband Fred (John Slattery) about preparing for this third campaign, he’s not that keen on her ambition, even though he paid for her last campaign. It’s clear he doesn’t really believe she could win, and that he is getting less and less interested in the idea of her living in Washington, D.C., far away from the family.
Fortunately for him, Phyllis feels the same when she visits Crane in D.C. First, Crane is even more handsy than he was when she was on his show, trying to convince her to get dinner with him. She dismisses the ERA to Senator Goldwater, saying she’s never been discriminated against. But seconds later, she finds herself in a room of men who are asking her to take minutes.
Thanks to directing duo and Captain Marvel helmers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the pacing of the premiere is so finessed, that I can only describe this moment to you as something I myself experienced. The sounds of the men get low while Phyllis asks Goldwater’s secretary for a pad and pencil, but the sounds of the women protesting in favor of the ERA just get louder and louder. She realizes, unlike her husband, the men of D.C. have much less reason to listen to her. They have less respect for her than she feels is due to her (which is probably just a little more than is actually due to her), and a lot more power to push her around. So she gets angry about something they will feel compelled to listen to her about. And when Goldwater says that the housewife vote that Phyllis so staunchly represents is exactly what could’ve put him (or Reagan) in the White House, you can practically see the wheels of Phyllis’s mind start turning.
But for now, we’re not privy to them. Instead, when we see Phyllis again, she’s comforting her sister Eleanor (Jeanne Tripplehorn, somehow deglamorized with her ’50s housewife styling) for being unmarried, telling her she had a bit of bad luck, a strange exception compared to how she spoke a scene earlier. We also see Phyllis acquiesce to her husband’s affections, over her own protests. The way Phyllis acquiesces to Fred makes me think of Phyllis’ politics on marital rape—mainly, that it doesn’t exist. It’s similar to the contemporary dismissals (which can come from both the right and the left) of certain #MeToo stories as simple complaints. One of the many complicating factors in even more privileged women dismissing specific rights for all women is that they might feel they have no right or ability to claim those rights themselves.
When Phyllis and Fred sit down to dinner later, she tells him she’s not going to run again—but her mother is moving in. Here is where Phyllis really comes into her power. All those little faces she makes when people aren’t looking are less about her secret pains or frustrations (although there is that), but more about the strain of keeping those thoughts to herself. She refuses to be tragic; everything she does is to evade tragedy, including not running again. She may want it, and feel it’s her right, but she’s not sacrificing the power she does have in her family and community for much lesser powers and much bigger struggles outside of it.
Though Phyllis comforted Eleanor in private, she’s very willing to sell out her story at the mother-daughter luncheon—probably because she knows her sister has no power to fight back. She sends out her little newsletter, The Phyllis Schlafly Report, to her giant mailing list, which includes the National Women’s Political Caucus, an effective way to introduce the other characters to be featured in upcoming episodes.
There’s Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne), Betty Friedan (Tracy Ullman), Bella Abzug (Margo Martindale), and Jill Ruckelshaus (Elizabeth Banks), among others. There’s also a divine moment where we go from the little TV in Phyllis’ kitchen to Shirley Chisholm (Uzo Aduba). Every one seems as much of a character as Phyllis. I’m so excited for this series.
Stray observations
- That CREDIT SEQUENCE. Amazing, beautiful, masterful—and Danette found the original song so now I can play it on a loop for the next month:
- I’m curious if the creators knew that the year the show premiered, 38 out of 50 states would’ve ratified the ERA—the exact number needed to officially amend the Constitution. Which means it’s one step closer to becoming law, but of course, there’s a lot more obstacles now than there were in 1972…
- Edited to note: Mrs. America is an FX on Hulu series.
- You can learn more about passing the ERA here, and more about the tangled web of legality here.
- Hi there, I’ll be recapping Mrs. America for the A.V. Club! As a teenager, I read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and considered Phyllis Schlafly my personal nemesis (I was a very dramatic teenager). I’ll have two more recaps up today, as the series premiered with three episodes. The stray observations will include some historical context for the series, but if you have your own to share, please post it in the comments!
90 Comments
I’m conflicted about this show. Schlafly was such a giant piece of shit, but it sounds well done and hopefully focuses more on other characters. Anyways, rest in piss Phyllis.
Correction: that is SENATOR Tammy Duckworth, thank you very much
I’ve never had it put to the test, but I don’t think I could meet a Duckworth without quacking at them a là Gordon Bombay.
“So, are you literally worth a duck?”
So if she’s worth the same as a duck… then she’s made of wood?
Not Cottonworths or Puppyworths, no, Duckworths! Woo-hoo!
Stray observation: I don’t see anywhere in your review which platform or channel this series is on.
The fact that it is on Hulu would have been a nice bit of information to include.
I thought it was on FX at first. Pissed me off.
Canadian viewers (like me) will be happy to know that this, like the rest of the “FX on Hulu” shows, is in fact being shown on the regular version of FX up here on regular-ass cable TV, which makes me resent stupid Hulu not being available here just a tiny bit less. In fact, my guide shows it as being on tonight at 7, right after two new episodes of “What We Do in the Shadows.”
Wait its on Canadian FX but not American FX? The fuck.
One more reason for me to emigrate.
As I refuse to get Hulu, it’s off to the Torrents I go!
One simple reason–because in Canada we don’t get Hulu. In the past, Hulu shows pop up in various places usually on basic cable here (though we still, as far as I know, haven’t gotten Little Fires Anywhere, well, anywhere here yet). I think the FX on Hulu concept is inane, but it makes sense that those shows would simply go to FV Canada here).
However, the frustrating downside is we’ll be two episodes behind the US. Hulu got three episodes yesterday, we got one (with the second airing next week—episode four airs next week on Hulu). I wish they would have just aired three here—I felt like the premier, while very good, seemed a bit short to really grasp all of the characters and I would have welcomed more episodes for the first night. And it also means following reviews here is useless as the comments will be irrelevant by the time it airs here. But, oh well…
It seems strange to start a miniseries of the who’s who of the 1970s women’s movement with Phyllis SchlaflyI dunno so much. Say whatever you want about her (go ahead. I won’t mind), for better or pretty much worse she probably had more significant real-world impact than the rest of them put together.
I mean, as far as her lasting legacy, I would agree. (Unfortunately.) Phyllis Schlafely is like the human equivalent of dropping the bomb.
A great subject when playing the old “time machine assassination” game.
A person could argue that her ability to rally the previously-disinterested-in-politics crowd by convincing them that advancements that would actually help them are actually bad for them gave us the bloated cheeto we currently have in office today. What a legacy.
While it was probably the clumsiest moment of the episode, that shot of Phyllis’s face dissolving on paper as the women’s right people celebrated about their sure victory was a powerful one. I thought it made a lot of sense to start with Phyllis as she is the destruction that is about to arrive and what makes this story what it is. If they had succeeded with ERA, then the story should have been how they build for that magnificent achievement.
Right. Narratives of the history of the 1960s/early 70s has shifted from emphasizing the progressive changes of the period to outlining the origins of the modern conservative movement. The choice to focus on Schlafly first reflects this new understanding.
Goddammit! It’s on Hulu……….Why is life so hard?#Firstworldproblemsduringpandemic
I am “A Fifth of Beethoven is a song that needs to be tracked down” years old.
Right? The song was a #1 hit, went double platinum, and appeared on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Not exactly an obscurity.
I was thinking the same thing…that song was fucking everywhere for a bit and if you went to a roller skating rink from 1977 to 1982 you were going to hear it at some point.Man am I fucking old.
I was gonna say–I wasn’t born until 1980 and I feel like I’ve always known the song, admittedly I got really into obscure disco in my late teens, but this is not obscure disco. I did initially think that the song was anachronistic for an early 70s set show–but then I realized (obviously) we’ll probably go through to at least 1977/78 by the end.
I was kind of taken aback hearing “A Fifth of Beethoven” over the opening credits, as the story takes place in 1971 but the song wasn’t released until 1976.
“Artistic License” I guess…
Although do people these days get the pun given that liquor isn’t sold in fifths anymore — even in America?
People call the 750ml a fifth around here.
Yeah, I guess it’s close. Like you could call a half-liter of beer (the way some European countries serve it in bars) a pint.
The SiriusXM 70’s channel plays that song fairly regularly.
It’s a damn fine song that I like without irony.
I mostly know the song from the Simpsons:
I both really want to watch this series and also sort of don’t, because I swear to sweet baby Jesus, if they try to make me feel sympathy for Phyllis Schlafley, I’m going to riot.
I am having similar feelings in another direction. I don’t know if I can watch this because I hate Phyllis Schlafly that much, and if Cate Blanchett does a good job portraying her, the rage may consume me entirely.
Exactly!
I know. Cate is my favorite actress working today and I like her quite a bit. But talk about an unsympathetic role to play.
She really nailed that role as the Russian scientist in Indy 4!
She was one of the few enjoyable parts of Indy 4.
I like to think it was a Krusty the Clown situation in accepting that part — “They drove a dumptruck full of money up to my house! I’m not made of stone!”
I think she genuinely wanted to be a Indy villain. She’s done tons of roles that are more fun then prestigious. Its why I like her. You’ll never see Meryl Streep in a How to Train Your Dragon film.
Not exactly “How to Train Your Dragons” but she sure seemed to have fun in “Death Becomes Her”
Good example.
Like Michael Cain’s response to Jaws 4 “I’ve never seen the film, I have however seen the beautiful beachfront house it built and that was marvelous!” (paraphrasing)
Doesn’t look too much like they were going for the sympathy angle.
Such a hateable “human being”, and don’t get me started on her idiot son…
I just worry they’ll end up doing the thing where in the fourth episode we learn that she was secretly abused as a kid and thus felt she needed a man’s protection or whatever, blah blah, and then the sad violins will start and – because I’m an empathetic sucker who thinks about people other than myself, unlike Phyllis Schlafley – I’ll start to feel bad for her. Blech.
Call me cruel but I rarely feel sympathy for awful people who had bad childhoods. Like yeah it sucks that Jeffrey Dahmer had a shit childhood. It doesn’t make me feel bad for him after what he did.
Hmm. I would suppose I come from the view that I can feel sympathy while also deciding that their past doesn’t excuse their present. Like, do you remember a few years ago, Chris Brown had given an interview where it came out that he was raped as a young teen (although I think also the interview made it pretty clear that he doesn’t see it that way)? Like, that made me feel bad for Chris Brown, the vulnerable child, but in no way made me want to excuse the actions of Chris Brown, the adult shit-head. Just provided more context for his actions, I guess.
Yeah I remember that. I’m into psychology and criminology so I’ve heard all types of horror stories during peoples formative years. With stuff like abuse from parents you tend to either repeat the behavior or you go out of your way not to do it Its depressing but it makes it hard to feel pity for someone. Like my favorite example is Myra Hindley. Beat by her mother and father in post war England and were very poor. Her best friend drowned when she was 15. She grew up to kidnapped, rape and murder children. Sympathy is a wee bit hard for her.
It’s always the fourth (or 5th) episode because they used to send 3-4 episodes to reviewers like AV Club early. So reviewers could get their stuff ready to post and get really into the show and then CLUNK goes the next episode. Once you recognize the pattern it gets old fast.At least now they’re just releasing them all at once.
Oh, I don’t know. That very well may be part of it, but the old “just kidding this villain is actually an abused orphan!” switcheroo is a story-telling trick as old as time. (I mean if VC Andrews could do it in the early 70s and it be considered tired by then . . .) It does make sense from a story-telling perspective though; it’s far more interesting a narrative to ease humanity into a real asshole than it is to watch a naive kid turn into a real asshole.
On the hand, Margot Martindale…
You make an excellent point.
Just go into the first episode knowing Blanchett is the evil guy even if the show is trying to make her to good guy. I kept getting whiplash at the “oh he kept asking her out to dinner, I should feel sorry for her, wait she just insulted every woman alive!” I rewatched it with the idea the Blanchett is the Joker and it makes 100% more sense to me. Everyone but her maids and her sister-in-law is evil.
I just keep reminding myself that every little indignity she suffers is something she then willfully turns around and says is actually not an indignity and that women should be lucky to be forced into having sex with their husbands and then I hate her again.
Reply from the first two episodes: they did. They made me feel bad for Phyllis Fucking Schlafely.
There were a few points where I felt a tiny pang of sympathy but it rarely lasted. I think there’s very little primary research/documents available on her actual inner life. There’s an implication by the show that she pivots her energy to STOP ERA because she’s not being taken seriously on her legitimate national security and foreign policy expertise and this is where she could be listened to. I tend to fact check everything when I watch historical fiction but I found this so compelling that I didn’t want to look away to furiously Google everything like I normally do.
I am not sure if I can actually watch this. It would make my blood boil.
Ditto. Cate Blanchett can do no wrong but I don’t think I can stand watching Schlafly.
Women need to know there place. Those suffragettes have a lot to answer for 🙁 – Jobbik Hess, buenos aires, Argentina, 26/6/2013 15:03
Hess, eh…
Lord almighty did my late mother haaaaaate Phyllis. Like she referred to her as just that cunt. Even when she was dying of cancer she was quite pleased to have outlived her. What a disgraceful human being.
Hey! Don’t talk about your mother that way!
Fact check: Betty Friedan is played by Tracey Ullman, not Lily Tomlin. They don’t even look alike!
I was trying to figure this out when I saw the name in the review as my initial reaction was honestly bafflement that did I not recognize Lily Tomlin?
Ah, thanks for pointing that out! For some reason I get their names confused even though I know they’re different people!
Oh this is so good
Cate Blanchett was so magnificent in this episode. Usually being impressed by acting is a negative as then you are thinking about it, but there the choices just constantly left me in awe. Just the way Blanchett worked Phyllis’s smile and made it tell so much about where she was at that very moment in the scene.It also made perfect as Phyllis is somebody all about that facade, so of course the smile would be such a major part of her presentation.
One of the things I really liked about the show was that, while it was from subtle, they constantly showed the presence of African American workers helping out the Schlafly family while Phyllis kept talking about all the work housewives do and how they should be respected.It was this really efficient way to drive home how affluent they were and how the horror story she was pushing was really to people who hadn’t worked. Also the way she made her own sister a horror story at the end was deeply chilling.
I like that they show how unencumbered she is in her element and that it is a function of having the maids and the stylists handle all the hard stuff that drags people down on a daily basis. Like, I don’t doubt Elon Musk works an 80 hr week. I don’t doubt that he actively works for those 80 hrs. But his 80 hr week is not the same as someone balancing multiple jobs and he has teams of people taking care of all the stuff that allows him to make his decisions with the least exertion of stress or detail.
Similarly, Schlafley is intelligent and accomplished, but much of that accomplishment comes from being able to walk into a room, and have people listen to you because your husband is important, your hair is styled, your clothes are tailored, and you brought the muffins.
Doesn’t mean you didn’t work to get where you are, it just means that you have an advantage.
Another really neat detail was that the reason Phyllis got the permission from her husband to go to Washington was because the sister was willing to watch over the kids. Yet when Phyllis realizes how she will gain that power she clearly craves, she was willing to demonize women like the sister, despite knowing her anguish and pain, without seeming a second thought. Nor did we see her in anyway reach out to apologize or to explain afterwards, like there was no need for such actions for her.Another really well played out angle was the dinner where the husband clearly thought that he had now asserted the power over Phyllis while she in turn is clearly already seeing the power play beyond him.
As a St. Louisan who has loathed Schlafly since I knew who she was (thanks partly to my mother’s staunch feminism and love of Gloria Steinem) – I’ve been eagerly awaiting this series. STL sees Phyllis Schafly and her legacy as something of a joke (at least anyone with half a brain), so I’m glad we can see the true damage she did to this country.
Cate Blanchett’s performance was nothing short of masterful with this episode. The way Phyllis for the most was subservient yet snapped when asked to take notes, thats when the Phyllis we’d see all the time around STL came out.
Her facial movements were what got me and made my skin crawl. I need to remind people that it wasn’t just the War on Women. She was against gay marriage, immigration reform, and essentially anything that progressed society.
Also the Washington University mention in the pilot, begs I share this link. In 2008, Schlafly was awarded an honorary degree. Big time protest. Backs turned, walk outs. She referred to the protestors as “losers” but this was a BIG deal in the city. A lot of my WashU friends walked out on her speech.
So yeah I have little sympathy for her. I’m thrilled to see Cate slaying the role but these attempts to give Phyllis compassion or make her seem conflicted are moot with me.
Blanchett really shines in this and she gives so much depth to her character, while you might not like everything she does, it gives you an understanding of the why she did things. On a side note, considering how the political environment is shaping up, the next election may be another blue wave and one would guess that ERA will get added to the Constitution.
It’s too late for the original ERA, we’d have to start over (which might be just as well considering how much clearer we need to be about how this must apply to every living person.)
Another minor correction: Eleanor is Phyllis’s sister-in-law (and Fred’s sister).
Wow, Slattery was barely recognizable in this, with his fake nose and whatever other prosthetic makeup appliances were on his face.
Fake nose? I thought maybe he just had aged considerably–but definitely his appearance had me confused. But it definitely was bothering me at first that he seemed so much like Slattery, but not quite… But given this show’s connection to Mad Men…
Blanchett is wonderful in this, but I’m already irritated by Byrne as Gloria Steinem. (This is probably addressed more in reviews of future episodes, but I haven’t gotten that far!)
…she’s comforting her sister Eleanor…Eleanor was her husband’s sister, as stated in the episode. And the real Eleanor Schlafly was not a mousey housewife-type, but a wealthy conservative activist in her own right. (She did remain unmarried until her death at age 98 in 2018.)
Interesting—was she a conservative in her own right back in 1970 though?
And thanks—it was bothering me that the review and people on here were calling her her sister (sure, perhaps it’s a fine distinction, but it is a distinction…)
…was she a conservative in her own right back in 1970…?Yes, she was, since the 1950s, and working alongside Phyllis.
Eleanor is Phyllis’ sister-in-law, not sister.
Thank you for enduring this – no matter the cast or how good, there’s enough bullshit STILL going on currently with wealth and privilege denying access to justice, equality for everyone else without torturing myself with the dramatized facts about this C*NTbag whore bitch. If not for her, perhaps we’d be further along now and the shitshow dumpster fire would never have risen. I wish there was a Hell so I could take pleasure in the likelihood that she’s burning in it.People are individuals. Not all women – OR MEN – are suited for, or want, family and parenthood. Her implication is that is all we are – our gender and breeding capabilities. And that women are weak and need to be propped up by men. I for one don’t want a partner that isn’t a partner – or who expects a raft of performed duties based on typical gender norms or my gender.I suspect this is about production of cannon fodder for their profitable wars and police actions. Sheer evil. I lived through a lot of this and remember even as a young person how horrific and baseless the arguments about drafting women were and the infantilizing threats about lack of alimony and child support (as if the number of deadbeat dads isn’t already proof it just doesn’t matter).
I’m confused. “I suspect this is about production of cannon fodder for their profitable wars and police actions. “–do you mean that’s the show’s agenda? Cuz given the showrunner, the actors, and the way the show has played out so far, that’s not remotely true…
No, no, no. Conservative brainwashing of their moronic supporters. Shlafly’s intentions were obviously not meant for people like her.The aspirationally wealthy are being hoodwinked. The GOP wants their sons and daughters – and their tax dollars. And will never benefit them in any way.
Ah, then we’re in complete agreement…
Yep! I already am filled with fury towards these evil scumbags – I can’t watch it for THAT reason. I don’t like who they make ME.
I wonder, does anyone know, if Schlafly and the women behind the ERA sat down together to discuss the ERA in depth? Or if the women behind the ERA sat down with the people Schlafly poisoned against the ERA to explain to them the actual intent of the ERA? (I haven’t watched the show yet).
I was totally with you until the thinly veiled jab at breast feeding. If you can’t breast feed, obviously its not the end of the world, but countless studies have shown that the physiological and psychological benefits of breastfeeding FAR outweigh formula feeding. Formula feeding has been linked to several maladies later in life, including obesity. In this realm, nature wins.Unfortunately our society is still ass backwards in accepting a mom just feeding her kid.