Edie Falco wasn’t exactly looking to play Hillary Clinton when Ryan Murphy first approached her about Impeachment: American Crime Story. But the four-time Emmy winner felt such protectiveness for the former first lady, especially after Clinton’s loss in the 2016 presidential election, that she was compelled to take the role.
“I’m a bit of a type A personality sometimes,” laughs the Long Island–raised actor. “If I want something done, I gotta do it. That came into my mind with this. I have tremendous respect and admiration for what she’s been through and what she’s accomplished in the face of that. And how she’s remained married to a man that she respects in spite of his issues and their issues together. I think she’s carved an admirable path through her life. I wanted to make sure she’s treated with respect…not that I did it right, but I wanted to be at the helm of taking care of this woman who was a national treasure and is pretty spectacular in the world.”
With Impeachment—a sprawling ensemble drama that revisits the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky chapter of U.S. history through the perspectives of the women involved—Falco plays Hillary as a savvy political adviser and steady support system to Clive Owen’s Bill. In Tuesday’s episode, “Stand by Your Man,” Falco delivers several powerhouse scenes, particularly one in which Hillary reluctantly agrees to appear with Bill during a favorability-boosting 60 Minutes interview as the scandal publicly spirals. Unlike Owen—who wore heavy prosthetics and relished the technical challenge of replicating the minutiae of real-life encounters—Falco did not concern herself with reenacting particulars of moments that are easily searchable on YouTube. She had zero desire, and as a single mother of two teenagers, likely no time, either.
“I was not interested in imitating it backwards,” says the actor, who is as refreshingly no-nonsense as the characters she plays. “That’s not what I’ve ever been hired to do. So I don’t.”
Instead, she read extensively about Hillary and broke down the character like any other she’s played in her career.
“If you’re an actor, you do it without thinking,” says Falco of her subconscious psychological analysis of Hillary. “This is the first time I’ve put words to any of this stuff. The processes happen without my knowledge, like while I’m sleeping. It’s very interesting.”
Speaking about Hillary’s guiding forces, Falco explains, “Her faith has been a big part of her life forever…and still is to this day. Like in her concession speech, she used a Bible phrase. The fact that she’s in a long-term marriage, I can’t relate to that, but that is something that she takes very seriously…. My parents were divorced. Everybody I know has been divorced. It’s almost like a rite of passage—you get married, get divorced, eventually you get married to the right person. I think she takes the marriage vows seriously. She made an agreement under God to be with this person until she dies. And I think she’s a public servant, and it’s been in her blood forever. You take the three of those things and it’s going to make you behave a certain way. From my vantage point, that is kind of what has guided her.”
She is quick to add, “If Hillary reads this and somebody tells me I am totally wrong, then I will say, ‘I am totally wrong and that was my imagination.’…To this day, nobody really knows what it’s like inside their marriage. And I think there might be more to that than most people are willing to give airtime to—it’s a long-term marriage in a world where that’s an anomaly.”
Falco did make choices in her portrayal of Hillary. In Tuesday’s episode, Bill wakes up Hillary on the the morning of his grand jury testimony to reveal that he has lied to her about his relationship with Lewinsky. In the scene, Bill explains that he did have an affair—and Falco decided to react with shock and fury.
“I spoke to director Rachel Morrison…but we were operating under the assumption that she believed what she believed at those moments. It’s complicated psychologically, because who knows what she actually knew, even in a deeper place, and what she was willing to admit to herself. Nobody knows but Hillary. But based on the information I was given, and the views of the filmmakers, this is what went on.”
To play Hillary, Falco was outfitted in the first lady’s ’90s fashions—painstaking recreations of oft photographed pants suits accessorized with headbands and gold broaches. Asked about the wardrobe, the Sopranos and Nurse Jackie star does not mince words.
“I have absolutely no interest in the costumes,” says the actor. “I want to know that the people who have been hired have an obsessive interest in it. When I show up, I really am just like a mannequin. I never have ideas about wardrobe. I used to think that was a fault. And now I realize, no, I just do my job. I would not want them telling me how to do my job.”
The actor similarly did not ask questions when it came to her costar, whom she met the first day of filming. Owen was already outfitted in full Bill Clinton prosthetics and costume.
“I thought I knew what Clive Owen looked like,” she remembers, laughing at her confusion. “I just thought, He looks different. And then at one point I was pulling out of the parking lot and some attractive man is running towards my window saying, ‘Hey, hold on, hold on.’ And I feel like, Oh, my God, that’s Clive Owen. The whole time we were together, he looked like Bill.”
“It wasn’t just with Clive,” she adds. They were filming during the height of COVID restrictions, when myriad precautions were taken on set. “I didn’t know what anybody looked like between the masks and the plastic shields. I didn’t ever know who the hell I was talking to. It was very strange.”
The series highlights the unfair and cruel ways that the women in Clinton’s orbit were treated—infuriating moments to revisit from a more evolved cultural standpoint. In Tuesday’s episode, after Hillary appears alongside Bill during the 60 Minutes interview—a P.R. Hail Mary she reluctantly agrees to—the first lady is told that the television appearance bolstered Bill’s popularity, but somehow hurt hers.
Did those gender imbalances anger and shock Falco on behalf of Hillary?
“I was doing it more from the point of view that those were how things were at the time,” she says. “I mean, I could compare this to the fucking Sopranos.” To play Carmela on that series, which premiered in 1999, the actor had to arrive hours ahead of shooting so her character’s appearance could be perfected—“the hair, the makeup, the nails, the jewelry…then Jim Gandolfini would come in and be on set two seconds later. But that’s the show that I was doing, about a woman who liked to get dressed up. So you do the show that you do under the circumstances that you do it. So no, I wasn’t shocked by any of it. That was the world…the world is evolving, and thank God for that.”
Falco thinks about what the Lewinsky scandal would look like if it were to unfurl in the present day.
“If some of this was taking place now, perhaps Betty Currie [the president’s personal secretary] would’ve put the kibosh on the whole thing early on, before anybody else knew about the shit going on in the Oval Office. People knew, and people were enabling it because that’s the way things were done back in the day. I don’t know that this would have gone anywhere as far as it did had it been happening now. Culture is like an organism. It grows. And it changes according to the circumstances…and you know, Hillary was living the role that she was living that nobody else could really relate to at a time that had different rules.”
Asked about the possibility of the real Hillary watching her interpretation on Impeachment: American Crime Story, Falco responds with rapid fire.
“I certainly hope that she has better things to do with her time,” she says, before allowing that Hillary is still stuck in her subconscious—whether she likes it or not.
“I had a dream not long ago—it’s embarrassing to say—about Hillary,” Falco reveals. “This was only a couple of weeks ago. We were hanging out. And it was very, very amiable. And then something came up about the show, and she turned around and walked away from me. In my dream, she was clearly not happy about the portrayal. And I woke up and thought, ‘Jesus Christ.’ She was not thrilled about it. But I guess that’s the chance I take.”
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