In 1998, Hillary Rodham Clinton found out that her husband, then President Bill Clinton, was having an affair with the young White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
“I told her exactly what happened, when it happened,” Bill Clinton says in the new Hulu four-part docuseries Hillary, which debuted at the Sundance Film Fest on Saturday and will be released on March 6.
“I said, ‘I have no defenses. This is inexcusable, what I did.’” The crisis nearly ended their 22-year marriage in August 1998.
The docu’s director, Nanette Burstein, said that the couple was willing to recount the experience in separate interviews, due to its significance in Hillary’s personal life, which the features explores in-depth.
“The reason why the Monica story was important to me was not just for the sake of it being salaciously interesting to people,” the filmmaker said, “but because Hillary’s always been judged by it.”
“Hillary” centers on the woman’s personal and political trajectory, beginning with her rousing commencement speech at her graduation from Wellesley, a breakout moment where she introduced her long-term goal of “making what appears to be impossible possible.”
It, of course, includes how she and her team dealt with the 2015 controversy over her use of a personal email server as secretary of state.
There are interviews with friends, colleagues, campaign managers, reporters and political figures like her former opponent and subsequent boss President Barack Obama.
The docu-series paints Hillary Clinton in a favorable light as someone who would stop at nothing to pave a path for a woman to one day become president of the U.S.
Clinton addresses one of the main charges against her–being inauthentic–by stating that it’s been hard, even impossible, to be “herself” in a world where her trust has been exploited and double standards reign supreme.
A festival moderator jumped right into audience questions, which riffed on the ongoing impeachment process, Clinton’s decision to participate in the invasive doc, and, naturally, then 2020 election.
Clinton discussed what she called unprecedented digital attacks on women seeking office.
“You see this now, particularly aimed at with Elizabeth Warren, a lot of just incredibly vicious attacks going directly at her,” Clinton said. “So you have all of the usual problems that we know about from our history, and then you’ve got this whole new challenge from what happens on social media to women who speak out or speak up or put themselves out in a public way.”
“People can support whoever they want to support,” Clinton said, “but when there’s a nominee, close ranks and support that nominee.”
That remark was one of the many times the audience broke out in applause. Impeachment was also top of mind, but Clinton said she wasn’t “expecting any miracles” when it comes to the removal of Trump from office. But in regards to the future of his administration and the Justice Department, Clinton concluded: “I hope it haunts them.”
Director Burstein also spoke why she made “Hillary” nearly four years after Clinton lost the 2016 election.
“I was still overcome with all the emotion of 2016, and it was too soon to re-litigate that. But there was a much bigger story — her whole life,” said Burstein, who believes Clinton’s life is a lens to look at modern history and topics like partisan politics and the women’s movement.
Despite a deep commitment to transparency and unprecedented access to her life, the former secretary of state said she had her tough moments.
“I was like a character out of 19th century literary magazine, fainting, saying ‘Bring me the smelling salts!’” Clinton said of some of Burstein’s questions. “But, I agreed to sit down and let her ask 35 hours of questions and, the thing is, then she did.”