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Mrs. America showrunner Dahvi Waller speaks with Awards Dailys Megan McLachlan about what Phyllis Schlafly represents about modern America, writing American history from a Canadian lens, and why shes interested in TV projects set in the past.

Ann Coulter. Tomi Lahren. Ivanka Trump. Modern-day conservative women have a particular look about themtheyre blonde, opinionated, and influence their base with manipulative rhetoric. Before these women, the mother of all conservative blondes was Phyllis Schlafly, who up until her death in 2016, was still throwing her support behind the GOP base, including publishing a book on Trump.

Mrs. America on FX on Hulu analyzes the rise of the conservative blonde by following Schlafly (Cate Blanchett) as she aims to dismantle the push for the Equal Rights Amendment. As showrunner Dahvi Waller points out in my interview with her below, on the conservative side of this debate, you have one woman who serves as the face of the movement, whereas on the other revolutionary side, you have many faces. However, today, there are many faces on both sides.

I loved getting the opportunity to chat with Waller about her captivating series, why she chose to center the action on Schlafly, the freedom of writing Sarah Paulsons composite character, and what Gloria Steinems (Rose Byrne) late-night fridge notes say about being a woman.

Awards Daily: The show spends a lot of time with Cate Blanchetts Phyllis Schlafly. How did you decide how much time should be spent with each character? And why the focus on her, whos essentially the antagonist of the story?

Dahvi Waller: I was excited about centering the series on Phyllis Schlafly for a couple of reasons. One, I was really interested in telling the story of how our country took a sharp turn to the right in the 70s, that really set the stage for understanding where we arrive at today. And thats really a story that can only be told through Phyllis Schlafly. I think one of her greatest achievements was ironically to build up a grassroots army of politically right-wing women who became the soldiers in the Reagan revolution. That was the larger story of the series beyond the Equal Rights Amendment battle. It felt that to tell that story, we really needed to spend quite a bit of time with Phyllis Schlafly. But also, I think you keyed in to an asymmetry about these two worlds. In one world, you have one woman who was the one singular leader of the counter revolution, and on the other side of the revolutionaries, you have so many leaders. So we had to figure out how to structure the series so that were not making it seem like it was a Phyllis Schlafly versus Gloria Steinem. It wasnt at all. The two never met. But really finding a way to structure the series so that we do give many of the women who are leaders in the womens movement in the 70s their due, while still contrasting these two worlds.

AD: Theres really so much care with that, too. While I was watching, I appreciated how you balanced all aspects of the movement. You include black rights, gay rights, and really run the spectrum. Was that something you gave extra attention to?

DW: Absolutely. In telling the stories about the Equal Rights Amendment battle, I was really, really interested in telling the story not only of the birth of intersectional feminism, which really began in the 1970s, but really the struggle for the leaders of the womens movement to understand how important it is to embrace gay rights and issues of racism within the Womens Rights Movement. (Laughs) I was really shocked to discover that the womens movement had not embraced intersectional feminism from the get-go from the late 60s, but still in the early 70s, they considered womens rights something different from gay rights, which was so shocking to me. I really wanted the series and all the writers on the staff to really focus on that struggle and not shy away from it.

AD: Sarah Paulsons character is one of the few thats not based on an actual person, and she gets her own episode in Houston. What was it like to write that character who wasnt restricted to a specific history?

DW: (Laughs) In many ways, it was so liberating! It didnt involve research, like 200 pages of research documents! We really wanted to represent the homemakers. Phyllis Schlafly was not a homemaker. She was a working woman who ran a massive organization, but there were homemakers who formed her grassroots group, and we really wanted them represented and dramatized, what it was like to be a homemaker at this time fighting against the Equal Rights Amendment with real characters. That was the genesis for Alice Macray and Pamela Whalen (Kayli Carter). But because there werent that many public figures who came out of Phyllis Schlaflys movement, we created composite characters based on real women who we either had spoken to, or read an oral history, or read a newspaper article. Alice Macray is a loose composition of some members I talked to as well as a neighbor of Phylliss I came across in a newspaper article from the 70s. But because she is a composite character, we had the luxury of having her change over the course of the series. With Alice, we were able to show a character move through this decade and have an actual change in her worldview and that was really exciting. I think she also represented the every woman. We had all of these larger-than-life historical figures who were so iconic, but we wanted an every woman whos very relatable, who could be the audiences way in to this historical time period.

AD: Youre Canadian, and while this story is a part of womens history, its also a part of American history. Did being Canadian allow you to see it from a different lens, and if so, where does that come through?

DW: That is such a great question. Most people are like, Who are you to write about American history? But you phrased it in a really interesting way. I do have some street cred. My parents are American expats who emigrated to Canada. Although I was born and raised in Canada, I do hold dual citizenship. But I really didnt learn any American history until I went away to college. Since my dad is a political scientist, who focuses on American government, I did grow up in a home watching political conventions on TV, and election nights were like the World Series in my house. I really did grow up learning about American political history from my father, thats probably a great influence. You can definitely see his influences in the show. And he was my unofficial political consultant who I would call whenever I needed, to find out information about the Democratic Convention in 72 and the 76 convention. He would give free consultation, which was very sweet of him.

But I do wonder if, because you asked this and no one has asked me before, I do wonder because I was born and raised in Canada, and in a way even though I have American citizenship, I always have felt like a bit of an outsider in this country, maybe it did allow me to see events that I didnt live through here in the states with a different lens, view Phyllis Schlafly without the same kind of loaded way because its not part of my own history. Growing up in Canada, we didnt have Phyllis Schlaflys! (Laughs) And Cate Blanchett is Australian, and I think she also has this outsider perspective. We can view things maybe in a different way than if we had grown up with these stories.

AD: How much research did you do about these real people? I love Gloria Steinems little dances she does. Was that something she actually does? How did you throw things like that in?

DW: We did a ton of research. I had a researcher working with me as far back as development. Once I got the writing staff, all of us were doing research. We must have read as a group between 25 to 30 books. I think I clipped a thousand articles in newspapers. Magazines. We read oral histories. We watched footage. We went pretty deep. And one of the reasons I wanted to go deep is to get at that specificity in character that you just alluded to. Gloria Steinem tap dancing is a great example. We were reading and watching a documentary about her on HBO that she took tap dancing lessons as a girl, and that she thought she would dance her way out of Toledo. Thats how she was going to make it out of her working-class background. And for a feminist icon to also be great at tap dancing and also that be a part of her childhood and be performative when she really didnt like the limelight and to get joy from dancing even as an adult, it was such a great character detail that I wanted to bring in to the Gloria episode.

Another small character detail which came out of the research, we read a lot about oral histories of Ms. Magazine and Glorias memoirs about running the magazine. In one of her biographies or articles about her mentioned that late at night when she was the only one at the office, she would sneak food from her co-workers. What really struck me that was so enchanting is that she would leave them little notes. I thought, one, thats so relatable. Two, theres something so enchanting about that. It made me love her, so I put it into the script. The specificity of that really says a lot about her, that she would leave a note behind.

AD: Yeah, a dude boss would just take food.

DW: Hes not gonna leave a note!

AD: Women would leave notes to each other.

DW: It really spoke to what a female-centric work environment it was. Same with the Tot Lot. When I learned that there was a Tot Lot in the corner of the office, where women would just leave their children there. We dont even have that today. We had an amazing art department that built the entire Tot Lot where Margaret Sloan brings her daughter Kathleen the first day. Another detail, one of my favorites, was that it was such a startup and everything was being thrown together so fast, that some of them were working on dishwashing machine boxes instead of desks. So we actually had that in Episode 2, and by Episode 4, they had desks. Those little details, the art department was as great at research as the writing staff was. They would bring those little details into production design.

AD: Phyllis Schlaflys daughter believes your characterization of her mother villainizes her. But I think Phyllis comes off pretty good. We all manage to care for Phyllis in some capacity. What were your thoughts on that?

DW: (Laughs) What I find most interesting about a show like this, especially when you have so many versions of women all across the spectrum, from saintly and angelic to villainness, all of those types of women are represented in the show. I think its an interesting Rorschach test for our own beliefs about ourselves as women and about women in power and about our political history. Its natural to project your own belief systems onto whatever youre watching. You cared about her, [but] some women watching have seen the show and said, Shes the anti-Christ. I hate her. And then other women are like, You really villainize her! Weve heard the whole gamut. For me, its rewarding that a show can have such extreme emotional responses from viewers. To me as a writer, its quite rewarding. How you view her says as much about you as it does about how shes portrayed.

AD: Youve worked on a string of period shows, starting with Mad Men, then Halt and Catch Fire, and now Mrs. America. Is there something that intrigues you about shows set in the past?

DW: Another great question that no ones asked me. I think that sometimes its easier for us to understand or to reflect where we are today by looking at a period of time in history where we have a little bit of distance and were able to see things more clearly, than if we were to write about relevant issues in a contemporary way. In the same way that Mad Men shone a light on gender dynamics in the workplace, even today, even though it was set in the 60s. [With Mrs. America], I wanted to look at it from a post-2016 lens. I think thats one of the appeals, getting to explore this world that way. Thats fun for me as a writer.

Mrs. America is streaming on Hulu.

Read more here:
'Mrs. America' Showrunner Dahvi Waller On Viewing American History as a Canadian, Showing the Birth of Intersectional Feminism - Awards Daily

OPINION: In case you hadnt noticed, theres yet another election looming and the honeyed words of persuasion are beginning to flood forth from all points of the political compass.

Were set to be bombarded with pre-cooked talking points, what the focus groups and super-secret internal polls are saying we should be told, what the advisers are advising, and who knows, maybe a decent, fact-based opinion or two, truly held, if were lucky.

Shame this isnt Finland its population similar to New Zealands. Are you kidding? Too cold, too close to Russia and too many strange habits, like doing weird things to each other with birch twigs, they say. And they dont speak English.

But heres the thing, apparently Finland tops the annual European index that measures resistance to fake news across 35 countries on that continent.

READ MORE:* Alison Mau: An election year to make George Orwell spin in his grave* Migrant kids are 'child actors', claims Ann Coulter, telling Donald Trump not to be fooled* When politicians hijack the pro-truth 'fact check'

Warwick Smith/Stuff

Keeping a close eye on what is said during an election campaign can be a bedazzling experience among the volume of pre-cooked sound bites and occasional strongly held views.

Fake news, before Donald Trump was invented, used to be known as plain old propaganda, false or misleading information or just liesbut where Washington goes, the rest of us follow, so fake news it is now, for the moment.

We know that when Trump moans about fake news, what he is really objecting to is something he disagrees with. If only people do what he does and get the facts from Fox News then there wouldnt be a problem, right?

Fox News is an experience all right, but its relationship with the real world is way too obscure for this news junkie.

Besides, there are, thankfully, alternatives that house a smorgasbord of offerings when it comes to trying to figure out whats going on around the planet.

Meanwhile, Finland, where the government, it is said, became fed up with being targeted by fake news stories out of neighbours Russia, decided the world had moved in to something called the post-fact age.

What to do?

Teach a counter-narrative, starting in the primary schools, thats what.

Begin with why fairytales work so well and take it from there, right through the years so you end up with a generation of young adults who can critically think for themselves.

OK, here our school curriculum is crowded and about to become more so when all our schools start teaching New Zealand history, assuming they get the resources and teachers from somewhere. As another aside, how many of our schools dont already teach NZ history? A few, some, lots?

Anyway, back in Finland, the clever things have incorporated aspects of critical thinking into various subjects across the curriculum. So, its not in a silo, Critical Thinking 101, or some such, as you might see at university.

Thus in maths, for example, students learn how easy it is to lie with statistics see any politician of your choice for a working example.

In art, they learn how an image is manipulated. A picture used to be said to be worth 1000 words. Now its not so simple.

In history, among other things, they get to dissect propaganda campaigns, again a useful skill to have come election time. And in language, theres a lot of fun to be had looking at how words can be used to deceive people and how they might mislead.

It would be a good idea to wheel in George Orwell at this point, because he penned the primer on English language and politics in an essay, while his novel 1984 also contains some pretty useful pointers when it comes to seeing what can be done with words. Democratic Peoples republics are still around even now. You know, the sort of place where leaders get a 99 per cent yes vote in elections. And the misguided 1 per cent are sent off to the countryside for a spot of re-education.

All this feeds into journalism, of course, and how it is ideally practised in places such as New Zealand, where facts are sacred but comment is free is the basic credo.

To get at the facts you need verifiable information though. In journalism, there are providing sources who are traditionally rated as reliable, such as the police, for instance. But of course, we live in an age where were drowning in social media and everyones facts are as good as the next persons. And science is horribly devalued. Perhaps well hurtle back in time to when religion and magic were deemed to explain the world.

But places such as Palmerston North are a bastion of education, so it is here, and in centres like us, where the struggle is being fought out.

Some of the signs are encouraging, especially when you look at the dire state of other parts, except Finland, it seems, and see what is occurring.

Alister Browne is an experienced Stuff scribe and former Press Gallery reporter who will write a weekly politics column

Read more here:
Beware politicians and their election-year tall tales - Stuff.co.nz

By Gulf Breeze News | on June 18, 2020

Recent actions by some state and city governments make me wonder if Ann Coulter was right when she stated Liberals Are Insane. For a government (city, county, state) to exist there must be order. In a free society, basic rules of decorum and respect for human rights are required.

All citizens in the USA have the right of assembly if that assembly is orderly and respectful of others. Recent protest marred by violence does not qualify for this right. Police hate blacks; therefore, the violence against them is justified! The facts show that 700 police have been hurt and 20 people have died during these so called peaceful demonstrations. Where is the concern and compassion for the police? One might note most of the violence occurred in cities run by liberal democrats. Violence and the destruction of private property negate any rational reason the demonstrators may have had. Mobs are useful tools for extremist. Vladimir Lenin called them useful idiots. Are you one?

Restoration of law and order is required if we are to survive as a free people. For the liberals that will flee these out of control cities, please do not bring you insane liberal philosophy to our fair city and state.

LARRY SESSIONSGulf Breeze

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Where is compassion for the police? - Gulf Breeze News

Sarah Paulson will once again be portraying a real-life person for Ryan Murphys FX anthology American Crime Story, but her transformation into former White House employee Linda Tripp in the upcoming fourth season, Impeachment, will entail much more work than the one she did to portray prosecutor Marcia Clark in Season 1, The People Vs. O.J. At least in the physical sense.

This is going to require a lot of things, Paulson said during Wednesdays Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Ill be wearing a lot of prosthetics and body transformational accoutrements, if thats a word I can use.

Tripp was a key figure in the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, a story that will be the focus of Crime Story Season 4. Impeachment: American Crime Story was originally scheduled to premiere this fall on FX but delayed back in January due to Murphys congested schedule. The season was just two weeks away from going into production when the pandemic hit. It was not long after that when Tripp passed away.

Also Read: 'American Horror Story' Season 10 Pushed to 2021, FX Orders Spinoff 'American Horror Stories'

And I dont know if I ever would have met Linda, or if Linda would have even been open to doing anything like that. But I got as many text messages when she passed away as if I had died or if she was my best friend, Paulson told Jimmy Kimmel. People were like, Im so sorry to hear about Linda and I was like, Im really sorry to hear about it too, but I didnt know her. And it was weird, because I had been spending so much time reading all these books and working with a dialect coach, so I was immersed in this. It was a very wild thing and it really did make me sad.

No new production start or premiere date has been set for Impeachment: American Crime Story, which also stars Clive Owen as Bill Clinton, Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinksy, Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones, Billy Eichner as Matt Drudge and Betty Gilpin as Ann Coulter.

Watch Paulsons interview with Kimmel above.

With all due respect to "America's Got Talent," summer is not exactly the time when Nielsen ratings threaten to fall off the charts -- at least, not the top of the charts. And when it comes to new series, a summer slot isn't generally a vote of confidence from the network.

Due to coronavirus production shutdowns, Summer 2020 should be an especially soft season. Click through our gallery to see how each freshman show's debut on broadcast television fared in total viewers.

Also Read: 2020-2021 TV Season: Every Broadcast Show Canceled, Renewed and Ordered So Far (Updating)

Rank: 6 Show: "Celebrity Watch Party" Net: Fox Total Viewers: 1.8 million

Rank: 5 Show: "The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons - Ever!" Net: ABC Total Viewers: 2.4 million

Rank: 4 Show: "The Genetic Detective" Net: ABC Total Viewers: 3.2 million

Rank: 3 Show: "Don't" Net: ABC Total Viewers: 4.2 million

Rank: 2 Show: "Game On!" Net: CBS Total Viewers: 4.5 million

Rank: 1 Show: "Ultimate Tag" Net: Fox Total Viewers: 4.6 million

Nielsen sheets are cooling off as the months warm up

With all due respect to "America's Got Talent," summer is not exactly the time when Nielsen ratings threaten to fall off the charts -- at least, not the top of the charts. And when it comes to new series, a summer slot isn't generally a vote of confidence from the network.

Due to coronavirus production shutdowns, Summer 2020 should be an especially soft season. Click through our gallery to see how each freshman show's debut on broadcast television fared in total viewers.

Also Read: 2020-2021 TV Season: Every Broadcast Show Canceled, Renewed and Ordered So Far (Updating)

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Sarah Paulson Says Her Transformation Into Linda Tripp for 'American Crime Story' Will Require 'A Lot of Prosthetics' (Video) - TheWrap

President Trump tweeted out a false claim this week that the elderly protester shoved by police in Buffalo, New York, was a member of the anti-fascist political movement antifa. He is not.

Last Sunday, the president once again said he would designate antifa as a terrorist organization. He made the same remarks last year after antifa followers rumbled with the far-right group, the Proud Boys.

Antifa has never been accused of killing anyone, unlike the white supremacist hate group Ku Klux Klan, which is not declared a terrorist organization.

Attorney General William Barr says antifa was responsible for the looting and violence that cities across the U.S. witnessed early on in protests against George Floyds murder and police brutality against Black Americans.

However, federal court records show out of the 51 people facing federal charges, no one is alleged to have ties to the antifa movement, according to an NPR review.

Over the years, activists on the left have debated whether to disavow antifas tactics.

Antifa, a loose organization of sorts, has its roots in Germany and the United Kingdom during the uprising fascist movements of the 1920s and 30s, NBC News investigative reporter Brandy Zadrozny says.

The modern movement came to the U.S. in the 70s and 80s, and they were known for fighting skinheads at punk rock concerts, she says.

Their ideology is based around a hate for fascism and a belief that people who are thought to be fascists are inherently violent, she says. Antifa believes violence is a useful tactic to combat violence from the alt-right.

The idea is that if more people had brawled in the streets with actual Nazis then Hitler and the Nazi party would have never risen to power, Zadrozny says. So antifa has popped up again now with the election of Donald Trump, the rise of the alt-right and the rise of far-right extremists and white nationalist groups that have sort of come up all at the same time.

Antifa has no leader and no clear organization. However, there are organized, localized groups who have followings on social media, such as the Rose City Antifa in Portland, Oregon.

Many became aware of antifa as a political movement in 2017 when they showed up at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally that gathered Nazis and white supremacists. In the same year, they helped stop Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right political commentator and Trump supporter, from speaking at the University of California, Berkeley by smashing windows and lighting fires on campus. Berkeley decided to cancel the event after the uproar.

Antifas goal is to deny fascists and far-right activist a platform, she says. Because of this, the right has long defined antifa as positioning themselves against free speech.

And it's not just violence in the streets, she says. It's also coordinated campaigns to shame out [and] harass those on the far right.

Theyve targeted far-right pundit Ann Coulter and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, for example, and have doxxed people who are associated with alt-right groups. Theyve said their strategy is to dehood Klansmen, Zadrozny says.

Inciting street brawls, such as what Portland residents have experienced, is not part of their main activities, she says. However, thats how antifa has largely been positioned by their critics.

High-profile politicians have claimed that antifa is showing up in small towns and wreaking havoc during anti-racism demonstrations. Zadroznys reporting for NBC News has found those claims are part of a top-down disinformation campaign from the president and the president's allies down to local law enforcement and then through social media.

The result has been small groups of armed militias showing up to counterprotest Black Lives Matter demonstrations all over the country, she says, from Florida to Idaho and Oregon.

In Klamath Falls, Oregon, Zadrozny says hundreds of armed counterprotesters showed up ready to fight this invisible monster they heard about on social media. They believed antifa was coming to their town to murder people, murder white people and take their guns and destroy their town. Of course, antifa never came, she says.

Their presence did, however, intimidate a large group of diverse people who came together to peacefully protest police brutality in their small town, she says.

This doesnt mean that antifa hasnt shown up to protests against police brutality, she says. It would make sense they would be present because a large factor in antifa ideology is anti-racism, she explains.

There are concerns that at some point, some peaceful protesters might get accused of being antifa, like what happened to the elderly man in Buffalo. She says a vigilante mob mentality is taking over small towns.

For example, she says, a man armed with a chainsaw ran off protesters in McAllen, Texas. And in Forks, Washington, a multiracial family on a camping trip was harassed and trapped by locals who accused them of being with antifa.

It just seems like a powder keg, she says. And people that I've spoken to, activists from small towns to larger groups on Black Lives Matter side, they're very concerned for their safety.

Cassady Rosenblumproduced and edited this interview for broadcast with Tinku Ray. Serena McMahon adapted it for the web.

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What Is Antifa? Separating Fact From Fiction | Here & Now - Here And Now