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‘Mrs. America’ Director Amma Asante on That Shirley Chisholm Episode
Groundbreaking Hulu series ‘Mrs. America’ delves into the erasure of Black women’s work
At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss Mrs. America, FX’s nine-part series tackling the women’s movement of the 1970s, as not being for us. It stars Cate Blanchett, Rose Byrne, Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Paulson, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and Tracey Ullman for starters — all White. But Mrs. America also features Uzo Aduba as political icon Shirley Chisholm and Niecy Nash as brash attorney Flo Kennedy. Historically speaking, given the focus on why conservative special interest leader Phyllis Schlafly, superbly portrayed by Blanchett, led the countermovement successfully stonewalling the Equal Rights Amendment, the series has plenty of interesting takeaways. After all, women’s rights, particularly the call for equal pay for equal work, is important history for women of all races.
While Chisholm — the first Black woman elected to congress — stands among the female titans in the series, Mrs. America’s rendering of Black women’s participation in this movement is not sugarcoated in the slightest. Telling the truth means also revealing how peripheral many women of color were to what many call a White woman’s movement, and the series even shows moments where the golden girls themselves are oblivious to how they practice this racial exclusion.
It’s reasonable to assume that these moments of intersectionality focused on race, gender, and class are largely attributable to the presence of acclaimed playwright Tanya Barfield, who serves as a writer and producer for Mrs. America. We also can assume that groundbreaking British director Amma Asante, best known for her breakout 2013 feature film Belle starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw as biracial 18th-century royal Dido Belle, plays a pivotal role bringing these issues to the fore. Asante directed episodes three and four of the series — the very ones where the story arc focuses on Chisholm and The Feminine Mystique trailblazing author Betty Friedan, brought to life by British comedic legend Ullman.
Asante spoke exclusively with ZORA via phone from her native England about her involvement in the series, her approach to the critical Shirley Chisholm episode, highlighting those…
