Geena Davis on Paving the Way for America’s First Female President
An aging Commander in Chief faces health struggles, and as a result, his younger, female vice-president ascends. That is, of course, the story of the 2024 presidential election in which Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, replacing an ailing Joe Biden. But it also happens to be a TV show plot – nearly 20 years ago.
The series, Commander in Chief, which premiered in 2005, starred Geena Davis as the first female vice president in American history, selected to help an older, white male political candidate appeal to other constituencies. Sound familiar? There are notable differences between the political fiction of the show and the political realities of the 2024 race, however. For one, fictional President Teddy Bridges is a Republican, while Mackenzie, portrayed by Davis, is an Independent. Oh, and in the show (spoiler alert!) the president dies, leading to the first female Commander in Chief.
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The show was initially a hit with audiences, beating House in the ratings. But it lost its momentum and was canceled after just one season, raising the question of whether America was ready for a female president, even a fictional one. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with some of the key players who helped make Commander in Chief to talk about the legacy of the show and how, if anything, it says about the 2024 election.
When asked if he believes that Commander in Chief helped prepare America for the reality of its first female president, series creator Rod Lurie says, “Without a fucking doubt.” He recalls saying to the executive in charge of the show, “If we all do our jobs… We’re going to change the world. Because what we’re going to do is get the whole world to become comfortable with the term Madam President.”
Davis offers a similar sentiment, hoping “that seeing a woman president onscreen would normalize the idea for people.” Lurie says the idea of a series about the first female president was a “duh” idea (as in, so good it was a no-brainer), and ABC bought it off the pitch, pending the attachment of a major star. There had been almost no depictions of women presidents in Hollywood before that. The rare exception was Polly Bergen in the 1964 comedy, Kisses For My President. Bergen would later be cast as the mother of President MacKenzie Allen on Commander in Chief. (Glenn Close depicted a female vice president in 1997’s Air Force One.)
There has since been a great deal written about the role of pop culture in, as David puts it, “normalizing” the position of certain underrepresented groups in society. Will & Grace and comedienne Ellen DeGeneres are credited with playing significant roles in transforming the image of gay Americans and, as such, the modern LGBTQ equity movement. A poll by Kaplan Thaler, taken the year after Commander in Chief premiered, found that of “76 percent of Americans familiar with Commander in Chief, 58 percent are now more likely to take seriously the idea of a female presidential candidate.”
Lurie recalls an interview with a group of reporters where one accused him of being a shill for Republicans since his female president (despite being an Independent) was serving in a Republican administration. Another reporter then asked him if he was trying to pave the way for President Hillary Clinton. “I wasn’t,” Lurie notes. “But I was trying to pave the way for a female president, absolutely.” Davis recalls that future Democratic nominee Clinton was a fan of the show. At an event, Bill Clinton “walked in and saw me, he said, ‘My president!’ He said it was his and Hilary’s favorite show. [They] never missed it.”
Despite Davis winning a Golden Globe for her performance, the show ultimately succumbed to internal politics, including Lurie’s firing. “Their logic was, I was late with scripts.” The network then brought in legendary showrunner Stephen Bochco, known for his gritty, iconic series like Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue. “The tone and central conceit of the show completely changed. It almost went from why we should have a female president, to why we shouldn’t,” Lurie claims, though admitting his own tenure at the show was far from perfect. “I made some mistakes.” Bochco would soon exit himself — he called his experience on the show “horrible” — and the series was on borrowed time.
“I always think about how much further impact the show would have had if I’d had a longer ‘administration,’” explains Davis. Anne Sweeney, once dubbed the “most powerful woman in Hollywood,” for her tenure as the first female president of ABC Television Group, says she thinks that “Commander in Chief was an important show to put on the air in 2005. At that time, women held significantly fewer seats in the House and in positions of influence in our government than we do today.” In 2005, there were 14 female United States senators. Today, there are 25. In 2005, there were 74 women in Congress. In 2024 there are 126.
Melissa Silverstein is currently Artistic Director of the Athena Film Festival but is best known for founding website Women and Hollywood to “educate, advocate and agitate for gender equality and inclusion.” During the Commander in Chief era, she was working at The White House Project, an organization founded to implement social change that could open pathways for America to elect its first female president. She believes Commander in Chief helped pave the way for more viable female candidates but also different kinds of female candidates. At the time, she says women candidates were bombarded with coverage of “hair, hemlines and husbands,” more superficial critiques that male candidates rarely faced.
Lurie recalls these were topics that he and Davis discussed in detail while formulating the fictional President Allen. They didn’t want to play into the idea that a female leader had to suppress her femininity by avoiding topics like fashion, but they also had to recognize the unfair double standards that female politicians were often held to.
Surprisingly, when contacted for this piece, Lurie said that few in the press had reached out to him about Commander in Chief, though they had reached out to him about his 2000 film The Contender, which starred Joan Allen as a female senator hoping to become vice president, who finds her political career upended by a sex scandal.
There was concern among some Harris supporters in Hollywood, that her critics would try to hurt her candidacy by dredging up attacks about her personal life. “Even though she’s been elected, not appointed to her jobs, there are still vulgar comments made about her,” Lurie notes. The fact that such attacks seem not to have landed, indicates to Lurie how far we have come since The Contender and Commander in Chief, projects he developed after having a daughter inspired him to create content that centered the experiences of powerful, complex women.
Davis not only served as a fictional president of the U.S. but also became a real-life leader in the gender equity space. She founded the Geena Davis Institute shortly before beginning the show, inspired too by her daughter. She notes: “I was horrified to see there were far more male characters than female characters in what’s actually made for and aimed at young kids. I didn’t intend at first to take it this far, but I found that no one I mentioned this to had noticed what I was seeing. In fact, every single person in the industry that I spoke to said, ‘No, that’s not a problem anymore, that’s been fixed.’ Something was not adding up, and that’s what convinced me of the need to get the research,” which is what the Geena Davis Institute focuses on. A 2019 report found that, “nearly a third of powerful female characters were shown wearing revealing clothing compared to less than 10 percent of similar male characters.”
Davis adds, “I always say that gender inequality in entertainment can be fixed overnight. It doesn’t have to be done in stages or phases. The next movie or TV show, ad or video game you make, can be gender-balanced with diverse females as leads, supporting characters and extras. We can easily create worlds where women are half of the characters and do half of the interesting things.”
Though Davis declined to weigh in on the 2024 election, former ABC exec Sweeney didn’t hold back in an email. “We know that representation is impactful, and it matters,” she says. “My hope for this election year is that a woman president becomes a reality, not just an inspiring fictional character from our past.”
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