“I have a four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and I don't want her to learn about Watergate in the same way I learned about it,” Gaslit showrunner and executive producer Robbie Pickering said at a TCA press conference to promote the series, now streaming on STARZ. Based on Slate’s Slow Burn podcast, the series follows Martha Mitchell, played by Julia Roberts, who blew the whistle on the Watergate scandal but never got the credit in the history books. “I want [my daughter] to learn that Martha Mitchell played an instrumental role in it and she wasn't just some drunk crazy lady. She was right. She was the first person to publicly blow the whistle on these people. I don’t want her to have to find that out by digging and digging and talking to historians. I want her to be taught that in school and she should and everybody should. And hopefully we can correct the record a little bit with this show.
(Starz)
“That's by design that we did not care about these women,” executive producer Sam Esmail added about why he was attracted to this series adaptation of Slow Burn. Taking a human approach to the story, the narrative focuses on two couples, including Martha Mitchell and her husband John (Sean Penn), Nixon’s campaign chairman. “Is this about the Watergate break-in? I think that is background. It is solely about the people behind it. It is solely about the drama between not just the couple but the sort of interrelationships between those couples. But at the same time, they are the engine of the story. It's a thing that you just didn’t realize until you listened to that podcast and you watch this show that you really realize that this takes looking at Watergate to another direction when you realize what actually went on.”
Another couple highlighted in the series is John and Mo Dean, played by Dan Stevens and Betty Gilpin. “They’re really women in 1972 struggling with the obstacles that women of the time dealt with,” Betty explained, another reason why Martha’s and Mo’s stories haven’t been properly highlighted before. The story is also set in a time where a political figure’s public persona was much more mild-mannered than we find today. “Your public self was very formal, and austere, and sort of this stiff, Norman Rockwell version of yourself. The White House was still sort of seen as this distant Camelot, and it’s the time when that was getting a little stale and people weren’t trusting it as much.”
John Dean was the young lawyer on who became a scapegoat for the Watergate scandal. “Anyone can go and read a book about this or read the Wikipedia entry, but when there are human stories lifting off the page, they kind of illustrate the depth of these stories,” Dan Stevens shared of his role in the series. “What stood out for me for this one was the fact that what you don't read on Wikipedia or any history books is about the wives and daughters of these men who were mentioned. And so even if you do have a sort of surface knowledge, the way that a story like this is told is deeply fascinating for someone who's learning about the roots and the network of the American system.”
Bringing these historic figures to life in a deeply human way extends to FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy, who tried very hard to protect Nixon during the scandal. “He was very family-centric, and some of the best stuff that I enjoyed in the piece was the stuff with the family,” actor Shea Whigham revealed of his roll. “These themes that are running through the humanism of who these people are, and that's what I wanted to tap into. That was what interested me.”
“I’ve grown up watching movies about this period as a Nixon geek and it always framed people in terms of heroes and villains,” Robbie Pickering concluded. “When you really read the history, what you’re struck by is the humanity of everybody in this story and how relatable they are. And I think the podcast really did a great job of putting into their shoes. I don’t know if back then many people knew who John Mitchell was. Martha Mitchell was a huge celebrity. I mean, people knew John Mitchell as the villain, Martha Mitchell was a huge celebrity. But I’m more interested and I think we’re all more interested in them as human beings and not political animals or anything like that. I think that, in a weird way, is comforting watching the series; seeing the humanity in all these people and knowing that it wasn’t some special place in time that is just so idiosyncratic.”
The first episode of Gaslit is now streaming exclusively on STARZ.