Hillary Clinton estimates she has been interviewed “more than a million times”. But for her new television project, the Apple TV+ documentary series Gutsy, the former US first lady and secretary of state turned the tables on herself, going from subject to interviewer.
“It was incredibly enlightening, and I have to say it took me some time to understand the difference,” Hillary told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “The professionalism of the crew, the women we interviewed for hours … I found it fascinating and I’m so glad I have the opportunity to do it.”
Hilary and Chelsea Clinton’s new documentary series Gutsy can be viewed on Apple TV+.Credit:Apple TV+
Gutsy, which Hillary is producing with her daughter Chelsea Clinton, is an eight-part documentary series which explores trailblazing women, some famous, and some not so famous. It is based on 2019’s The Book of Gutsy Women: Favourite Stories of Courage and Resilience, co-written by the pair.
But it is also a response to the dramatic shifts in the US in terms of women’s rights and access to healthcare, Hillary and Chelsea say, particularly the decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn the five-decade old ruling on Roe v Wade. That decision, handed down in June, effectively handed the decision back to the individual US states, many of which began to implement abortion bans immediately.
“To be a woman in America in 2022 is to inevitably be part of politics, because politicians have decided that they should have some say over the most intimate choices that women have to make in our own lives,” Chelsea said.
The decision to overturn Roe v Wade, coupled with a “concerted effort to ban books by some of our greatest American authors, including Maya Angelou, at various state and local levels [has the effect of pushing] women back into boxes with fewer choices and less agency and less visibility,” Chelsea adds.
Their TV series, Chelsea says, is an effort “to write more women into history and to better appreciate all that we have done and are doing as women, and [to explore] the many ways that women are being called on to be gutsy, as we stand up for ourselves and for each other and for what ultimately is right.”
When they wrote The Book of Gutsy Women, Hillary says, it was a response to conversations she and her daughter were having with women across America, and a sense that women’s stories were not being adequately covered.
“We think we’re taking it to the next level by focusing on a variety of women, whose stories are connected to the challenges and struggles that women globally are confronting right now,” Hillary says.
Like another high-profile project, the Duchess of Sussex’s podcast Archetypes, Gutsy puts the Clintons in conversation with high-profile women, including conservationist Dr Jane Goodall, feminist icon Gloria Steinem and actress Goldie Hawn.
“To be a woman in America in 2022 is to inevitably be part of politics,” says Chelsea, right. Credit:Apple TV+
But unlike Archetypes, Gutsy intentionally draws less well-known women into its discussions, including New York firefighter Jackie-Michelle Martinez and gun violence activist Shannon Watts.
“Chelsea and I are fortunate enough to have platforms, and we want to use those on behalf of others, and on behalf of women who are gutsy in standing up for causes that we believe in,” Hillary said, singling out one of America’s most contentious issues, the Second Amendment-protected right to access firearms.
“It’s insane that we allow guns to fall into the hands of people who then murder and massacre children in school, people going about their Saturday afternoon shopping, people in church or synagogue. It’s crazy,” Hillary says.
What the series hopes to do, Hillary said, is to give people like Watts, who founded the pro-gun control group Moms Demand Action, an opportunity to talk about key issues in a context outside a 30-second news sound bite.
“I had the great luxury, as Chelsea did, and that many interviewers on TV shows, on news programs, don’t have, they are three minutes, or 30 seconds, in and out,” Hillary said. “And we could really get to know the people we were talking to, connect with them and have little asides about their kids or grandkids or what they were up against.
“That to me was very rewarding, but it also made it clear how much more difficult it is for the professional interviewer on a show, that I’m often on the other side of, to get to what they need to get to because they don’t have the luxury of the time that we did,” Hillary added.
Hillary’s public life is well documented. She was America’s First Lady between 1993 and 2001, during her husband Bill Clinton’s presidency, a senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, and America’s 67th secretary of state between 2009 and 2013. Her daughter Chelsea, who was a teenager during her father’s presidency, works now as a writer and health advocate.
After her unsuccessful run for the US presidency – she won the popular vote in the 2016 election but America’s Electoral College votes carried businessman Donald Trump to victory – Hillary has shifted into the broadcasting arena. And she is not alone; former US president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama have their own deal with Netflix.
The mum and daughter duo want to use their platforms to highlight the efforts of gutsy women around the globe.Credit:Apple TV+
That led to Hillary executive producing Below the Belt, a documentary on endometriosis and later, with Chelsea, producing In Her Hands, a documentary about Zarifa Ghafari, who at 26 became one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors, and the youngest person to ever hold such a post in the war-torn country.
Asked about the “gutsy” women who had the greatest impact on her, Hillary singles out her own mother Dorothy Rodham, who passed away in 2011, aged 92, as a key role model. “I admired how she lived a very difficult life and came through it with resilience and gutsy-ness,” Hillary said.
The 74-year-old also acknowledged her sixth grade teacher in Park Ridge, Illinois, Elizabeth King, who “used to say all the time to all of us kids, don’t hide your light under a bushel basket.” King’s advice is why Hillary and Chelsea named their production company Hidden Light.
“I was very lucky that there were women in my real life and then women in history or from a distance that I was inspired by,” Hillary says.
The most striking difference between mother and daughter, Chelsea adds, is how many more female role models existed by the time the now 42-year-old Chelsea was growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas and, later, the White House.
“Certainly to me, my grandmother, my mother and my teachers were significant role models, but the mayor of Little Rock, when I was a kid, was a woman. My principals, at my public schools, were women. And that hadn’t been true for my mum when she was a little girl,” Chelsea says.
“I just had such a different experience in a way that I don’t think we had ever focused on until we started to write the book together because I just thought, oh, well, women can be doctors and mayors and leaders, because that’s what I saw as a little kid.”
Gutsy will debut on Apple TV+ on September 9.
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