Touring 'The First Lady' Suites
Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 4:00PM 
Showtime’s new anthology series The First Lady debuted this past weekend. The series looks simultaneously at three First Ladies throughout history: Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson) in the 1930s and 40s, Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer) in the 1970s and Michelle Obama (Viola Davis) in the 2000s and 2010s. The Film Experience will be covering its run (more soon on invididual episodes).
The network is rolling out a very specific type of red carpet to celebrate the series as it begins airing. Reporting for The Film Experience I was able to visit one of the First Lady Suites, which is a transformed presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Los Angeles. This is also happening in New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C. This was quite the lavish and detailed visual experience.
I snapped a few photos to complement my written descriptions of the visit…
After taking two separate elevators to get to the high-level floor of the hotel, my wife and I were greeted by serious-looking Secret Service agents as one of the event representatives emphasized the need for their presence outside the doors. We walked in to an enormous suite that had been outfitted with props and informational placards about Betty Ford’s life. This ranged from a closet of outfits to prescription pill bottles to campaign posters, and what impressed me most were the magazines and portraits that had Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty on them.
We were allowed to touch everything and spend as much time as we wanted there, and a docent took us around explaining the many phases of Betty’s life, like how her husband Gerald was supposed to be retiring from politics when he got the call that he was going to be appointed vice-president (this is covered in the first episode of the show). Emphasis was also made on her development of her drug treatment center and her own struggles with addiction.
I was already taken with the visuals and set pieces for each of the show’s many time periods for its three protagonists, and this tour offered an exciting trip back in time to not that long before I was born. It’s striking to see the level of detail put into so much of this and how Showtime is really trying to make it into an immersive experience. They even had digital portraits available for (free and instant) commission and party favors: cookies and drink tickets for the bar downstairs!
You can read more about the transformation from Marriott, and even enter a bid to stay in one of the suites in New York next week here. This isn’t what you’ll see there, but here’s a view of the Los Angeles landscape from the window of the suite:
Episode two of The First Lady premieres this Sunday at 9pm on Showtime.
Reader Comments (6)
Michelle is BY FAR the best thing about this series.
Now I just want a standalone series about Betty Ford!
Or a full blown movie so Michelle can get her Oscar!!
Pfeiffer is brilliant in this series. It's too bad that the series itself is kind of a letdown, because she is so amazing - if the series were better, she would have swept all the awards for the next year.
Plenty of actors cannot disappear into characters, and I think Viola Davis is one of them. It is impossible to buy her as Michelle Obama. They should have cast Regina King in that role.
I am pleased to see Pfeiffer getting the best in show reviews,she so deserving some sort of late career recognition.
This looks like a lot of fun! I'd be curious to see some of the others.
Nice article. I agree that visually it's hitting its marks. I only saw the first ep so far but Pfeiffer is clearly the MVP. She's really doing a terrific job. There are problems elsewhere though. I genuinely do not like what Viola Davis is doing - what's with her over-enunciating everything? Michelle Obama is much more relaxed in her manner. Gillian Anderson is fine, but I feel sort of sorry for her that she's now getting typecast as dowdy, aged politicians. (She does do it well!) But the main problem I have is that the writing is just so basic, melodramatic and even ham-handed. I was expecting something more sophisticated. In the end, however, it's all entertaining enough and I will totally watch the rest of it.
This might be the beginning of a new moment for Michelle Pfeiffer- like like Jennifer Coolidge and Jean Smart are having now. If she gets Emmy attention her agent needs to book her a supporting project fast! Waves of good will can lead to nominations and Pfiefer is certainly respected and admired in the industry. The narrative of "It's her time!" can basically write itself.