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.