John Lithgow and Laurie Metcalf to play Bill and Hillary Clinton on Broadway
John Lithgow has famously played an alien and a serial killer. Now he's about to play Bubba on Broadway.
Laurie Metcalf and Lithgow are set to play Hillary and Bill Clinton in the new Broadway show Hillary and Clinton, which is set during the 2008 New Hampshire Democratic primary, per The Hollywood Reporter. As Hillary vies for the Democratic presidential nomination, behind closed doors, her campaign debates whether to utilize Bill Clinton in a major way or keep him out of the spotlight.
Written by A Doll's House, Part 2 playwright Lucas Hnath, the show reportedly centers around four characters; outside of Bill and Hillary Clinton, there's also strategist Mark J. Penn and Hillary's Democratic opponent, Barack Obama. Hnath says Hillary and Clinton will neither be entirely biographical nor entirely fictional. Instead, it "treats the Clintons like Shakespeare treated real people in his history plays," he says, meaning it's both "fundamentally truthful and also wildly imaginative." He added that it will explore power both in a political campaign and in a marriage.
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Hillary and Clinton will begin previews on March 16, 2019. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, this will make it eligible at the 2019 Tony Awards, in which case Metcalf could potentially win for a third year in a row. Although if there's anything we learned from the actual 2008 Democratic primaries, victory should probably not be viewed as inevitable.
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Brendan worked as a culture writer at The Week from 2018 to 2023, covering the entertainment industry, including film reviews, television recaps, awards season, the box office, major movie franchises and Hollywood gossip. He has written about film and television for outlets including Bloody Disgusting, Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Heavy and The Celebrity Cafe.
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