Meryl Streep delivered a passionate speech Tuesday night honoring the women who came before Hillary Clinton in order to help make her historic milestone as Democratic presidential nominee.
“What does it take to be the first female anything? It takes grit and it takes grace,” she began.
“Hillary Clinton has taken some fire over 40 years of her fight for families and children. How does she do it?” Streep asked, to cheers from the audience at the convention.
Streep remembered historic women, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Geraldine Ferraro and Madeleine Albright. “They have forged new paths so that others can follow them — men and women. That’s Hillary. That’s America.”
Nearly 100 years after women got the vote, she praised the crowd at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, saying “You people have made history,” because “Hillary Clinton will be our first woman president, and she will be a great president, and she will be the first in a long line of women and men who serve with grit and grace. She’ll be the first, but she won’t be the last.”
The actress wore a Donald Trump costume at the annual Shakespeare in the Park Public Theater Gala in June, performing with Christine Baranski as Hillary Clinton their own version of “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me, Kate.
Tuesday’s lineup at the convention also included Lena Dunham and America Ferrera’s speech about the dangers of a Donald Trump presidency, Elizabeth Banks joke about his similarities with her Hunger Games character and Scandal‘s Tony Goldwyn introduce the Mothers of the Movement, who delivered a powerful speech about gun violence and Black Lives Matter.
