Hulu’s <em>Hillary</em> Is a Warning
Despite the title, Hillary isn’t really about Hillary. Not to the docuseries’ director, Nanette Burstein, anyway.
As a veteran of telling stories about controversial subjects, Burstein knew a documentary about one of the most prominent modern political figures would likely be short on revelations. Even with her exclusive access to Hillary Clinton and an array of her friends and staffers, the director understood that she’d be covering the same bases as Clinton’s own memoirs. So instead, Burstein approached Clinton’s life story as a case study, a way to try to answer a pivotal question about the state of U.S. politics today: Can a woman ever—really, actually, not just as a rhetorical question or thought exercise—become president?
Throughout Hillary, which premiered yesterday on Hulu, Burstein splices archival clips from Clinton’s career with footage from her 2016 campaign. Those videos—culled from about 1,700 hours documenting the former presidential candidate on the road—had originally been shot by Clinton’s team in the hopes of making a retrospective film about her bid for office. The director, who sought to expand the scope of that project after the election, approached her interviews with Clinton with the intention not only of getting to know her subject, but also of understanding why people found Clinton so compelling—and so polarizing.
Burstein and I spoke in January in Pasadena, California, shortly after she introduced the docuseries as part
