INTERVIEW: ‘And She Could Be Next’ looks at women of color transforming political arena
Photo: And She Could Be Next profiles several women of color who have recently run in political races across the country. Here is Lucy McBath on the night she won her seat in Congress. Photo courtesy of PBS / Provided by pressroom with permission.
And She Could Be Next, the two-part miniseries from POV and PBS, charts the stories, struggles and triumphs of several female candidates of color in the United States. Directors Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia traveled around the country to profile a number of important politicians and electoral races, documenting everyone from Stacey Abrams’ gubernatorial run in Georgia to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib in Michigan to State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo in California.
The miniseries, which premieres Monday, June 29 at 9 p.m., showcases stories from Skokie, Illinois, and El Paso, Texas, and seemingly everywhere in between. The common denominator is the search for true representative democracy and the continued progress by women of color in the political arena.
With the nation currently enduring the spread of coronavirus and Black Lives Matter protests being held in communities across the globe, And She Could Be Next seems perfectly timed to enter the national conversation and offer thoughtful portraits of women on the frontlines who are “building the movement” and “claiming power,” as the miniseries states.
“I’ve always been interested in politics, but not necessarily the politicians, and in 2013, I had made this other project where I had met Rashida Tlaib,” Lee said in a recent phone interview. “It was also about women in politics, but it was more of a historical piece. And I met with Rashida Tlaib when she was a state representative in Michigan. … I met Rashida, and for the first time, I was struck by her because I never met a politician like her. Someone who I thought was really grounded, authentic. She was a Midwesterner like me. She was a child of immigrants like me. She was really rooted in her community, a mom of young kids, just basically someone who I thought was really accessible, not someone who I envisioned as a politician. And I kept that image for me for the next few years.”
Eventually Lee connected with producer Jyoti Sarda, and the filmmaker was pitched the idea about a new project involving women in politics in 2016. This, of course, was when the country was close to electing its first female president.
“I had always been telling stories about women of color, immigrants, Asian-Americans, and it seemed like a natural extension of my own interests to look at politics through the lens of race and gender and looking at women of color,” she said. “And because it was such a huge, unwieldy topic, and we wanted to cover many different kinds of women in this process, we needed a big team, and that’s when I called Marjan Safinia to help co-produce and co-direct.”
[Read Hollywood Soapbox’s interview with Marjan Safinia here.]
Lee said it was a long process building a relationship with each of the profiled women — names that include Bushra Amiwala (Skokie, Illinois), Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (El Paso, Texas) and Congresswoman Lucy McBath (Atlanta). The directors needed to develop a certain level of trust with each subject.
“I think people saw what we were trying to do and then signed on,” said Lee, who has also directed Off the Menu: Asian America, Makers: Women in Politics and American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. “I think women of color have been organizing and building movements, have been actually the backbone of social movements in this country for a generation, but I don’t think that we’ve necessarily recognized that as a country. I think what’s happening because of the pandemic and also because of the uprisings that are going on, this country is really in this reckoning moment, questioning all of the institutions and all of the ways systems have been built up to this moment. So it’s a really interesting time to be releasing the film right now just because I think people are not just thinking about how do we rethink institutions, what does protest mean, how do people have a voice in our society, but also what does it mean for leadership. Who are the leaders that reflect the lived experiences that are not being talked about today? I think we are seeing a lot of what’s happening in the streets because so much of our leadership has been failing us and hasn’t reflected the realities of so many communities.”
Lee and Safinia’s finished product consists of a 112-minute first part and an 83-minute second part. The first episode establishes each of the characters and some of the issues at the heart of the documentary project.
“I should just say we didn’t anticipate that what would happen in Georgia was going to happen,” Lee said of Abrams’ highly influential run for governor. “We thought that our filming would end the day after the election in 2018, but because the election wasn’t resolved, and we continued on, we really saw the chasing of the ballots, the extent of the voter suppression in Georgia. That became the main focus of episode two, and then on top of that, what does it mean? We see all these women running for office, historic candidates each for the first time. What does it mean when you actually start to govern? We wanted to cover a little bit about that as well, so we did film a little bit into 2019.”
And it would seem they could have kept on filming with the current stories of women in politics and what might happen in the election cycle of 2020. And She Could Be Next is as topical as ever and perfectly timed to get people talking.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
And She Could Be Next, directed by Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia, will premiere on POV on PBS Monday, June 29 at 9 p.m. The second part airs Tuesday, June 30 at 9 p.m. This is part of the PBS Trailblazers initiative. Click here for more information.
