LOS ANGELES – A quarter century ago, after a law professor’s accusations of sexual harassment turned a Supreme Court nomination into daytime TV’s most compelling soap, the sitcom “Designing Women” aired an episode titled “The Strange Case of Clarence and Anita.” The show’s most dedicated feminist unveiled a T-shirt that read “He Did It.” Her political frenemy countered with one emblazoned “She Lied.”
Those fictional characters may have had an easy time picking sides, but for many of the 50 million Americans who sat slack-jawed through the 1991 televised battle between Anita Hill and her former boss, future Justice Clarence Thomas, allegiances weren’t so cut and dried.
Like FX’s recent miniseries “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” the HBO film “Confirmation,” premiering April 16, is more interested in examining our tendency to squirm through social issues than engage in a celebrity edition of “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.”
The testimony is riveting, but more revealing is how the Washington press corps and U.S. senators kept poking their fingers in the air to see which way the wind was blowing, only to gather soot. Unlike the current debate over whether Judge Merrick Garland should get his day in Congress, the war back then wasn’t between political parties but, rather, men and women — a division that dates to Adam and Eve arguing over whose choice it was to serve apple as an afternoon snack.
“I think the assumption is that the movie is about ‘Who’s telling the truth?’ ‘Who did you believe?’ ” said Kerry Washington, who plays Hill. “That’s a very provocative question, but one of the things we learned is that when you pull back the curtain, the story is way more complicated than he said/she said.”
Playing Hill, Washington altered her posture just enough to appear a full 2 inches shorter than her ninja-warrior fixer on “Scandal” and resisted any urges to tap her inner rabble rouser, despite rant-bait dialogue by “Erin Brockovich” screenwriter Susannah Grant. Instead, the actress expresses strength through quiet determination and fierce intelligence, letting her calculated pauses do the talking. Those who dare to cross her had better bring their A game — and their law books.
“Susannah really worked hard to make sure these were complicated, three-dimensional, vulnerable human beings and not kind of fulfill our idea of who somebody is,” Washington said.
As Clarence Thomas, actor Wendell Pierce drew a more difficult assignment. Thomas gets less screen time and, in one of his few moments in the spotlight, snaps at his wife, who is naturally thrown by allegations that her hubby is an aficionado of pornography and engaged in office banter that would make a high school football player blush.
