Film
INTERVIEW
Watergate farce shows how far politics has fallen
Willa Fitzgerald stars in 18½, a movie about a political scandal from a more innocent age
The Watergate break-ins took place in June 1972. In retrospect, the prototype of political scandals now seems pretty tame 50 years on. Outrageous, shameful behaviour from our leaders became routine. That was just how President Trump, and his British tribute act Boris Johnson, did business. The president complicit in orchestrating a break-in to a rival’s HQ to wiretap their phones? That would be one of the least serious offences Trump committed during his time in office. Compared to inciting a mob to riot through the offices of government, what’s the big deal?
“I know, and that’s the shocking thing,” says US actress Willa Fitzgerald, best known for her breakout role as Roscoe in Reacher, this year’s punchy TV adaptation of Lee Child’s detective novels. “We clearly live in a very different political atmosphere in which things that would have been absolutely decried in the Seventies are now just treated as: ‘well, you know, it happens’.
“In looking back, I think what a lot of people are searching for is a sense of comfort. This terrible thing happened that shook everyone’s faith in the highest office in the country, and yet, we all banded together, we persevered through and democracy prevailed.
“There’s a hope of being able to understand where we’re going. But I
