All our Sapphic dreams have come true! Gillian Anderson–the thirst trap for lesbians everywhere–will play rumoured-lesbian Eleanor Roosevelt in Showtime’s upcoming series, The First Lady.
The American anthology drama television series, by Aaron Cooley, will premiere on April 17, 2022. Gillian Anderson joins a crazy-good cast; she’ll be acting alongside heavyweights Viola Davis and Michelle Pfeiffer.
“Gillian Anderson is an actress of incredible range and exquisite talent – she is the perfect choice to complete this powerhouse trio, who will inhabit the roles of these iconic women,” said Amy Israel, executive vice president of scripted programming for Showtime, according to Variety. “It’s inspiring to have Gillian, Viola Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susanne Bier and Cathy Schulman at the forefront of ‘The First Lady.’ They have truly set the stage for a landmark Showtime series.”
Eleanor Roosevelt was the longest-reigning First Lady in US history, serving from 1933 to 1945. “Controversial for her outspokenness, particularly on civil rights, she was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences, write a daily newspaper column and host a weekly radio show. She also pushed the United States to join and support the United Nations and became its first delegate.”
But did you know Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t straight? Eleanor’s love affair with journalist Lorena “Hick” Hickok was finally addressed in the novel White Houses by Amy Bloom. Whether Eleanor was lesbian or bisexual is up for debate–she was fairly close to her beloved male bodyguard Earl Miller as well–but it was no secret among those who knew them that “Hick” and Eleanor were deeply in love.
“Unlike Roosevelt, who grew up in a rich and aristocratic family, Hickok was born into poverty in rural Wisconsin,” according to the ABC. “She escaped a violent father before forging a career for herself as a journalist.
“She was a highly regarded reporter for the Associated Press when she was assigned to cover Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932. As she grew closer to the Roosevelts, Hickok gave up her job and eventually moved into the White House — in a room adjoining the first lady’s.”
There were 3,500 letters between the lovers and Hick preserved almost all of them. Soon after her husband’s inauguration, Eleanor wrote to Hick, “And so you think they gossip about us … I am always so much more optimistic than you are. I suppose because I care so little about what ‘they’ say.”
Who benefited from keeping Eleanor’s sexual orientation a secret from the public? She wasn’t concerned about their love being exposed. Her unconventional marriage wasn’t a sign of a ‘progressive’ male partner, either: Franklin was away from home for 116 weeks in the late 1920s. Eleanor was with him for four of them. His secretary was with him for 110.
Eleanor wasn’t a happily married woman wanting to get kinky with women on the side. She was keeping up appearances for an absent husband. She wasn’t comfortable with the feminine expectations forced upon her; later in life she confessed, “I do not think that I am a natural born mother.”
Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt’s marriage exemplifies surface-level ‘progressiveness’ that, if anything, just masked the mundane misogyny evident in monogamous and open heterosexual relationships alike.
While Franklin was busy tossing a coin, choosing between Eleanor and another woman, Eleanor wrote to her cousin, Sally, “It is impossible for me to tell you how I feel toward Franklin, I can only say that my one great wish is always to prove worthy of him.” Prove worthy of him? Was he an equal or a father?
How will the series tell Eleanor Roosevelt’s story? Will it be told only in her relation to Franklin, as an extension of him? Or will her own desires, pain, beliefs, activism and sexual orientation be featured?
