‘Commander in Chief’ creator says goal was a female president

Watching Commander in Chief star Geena Davis, as President Mackenzie Allen, helped the country prepare for a moment when a woman steps into the job, Commander in Chief creator Rod Lurie told The Hollywood Reporter.

“Without a f—ing doubt,” he said.

Lurie said in a remembrance of the series published Tuesday — two weeks before an election in which a woman is running for president — that he had a serious message for the executive in charge of the ABC show: “If we all do our jobs… We’re going to change the world. Because what we’re going to do is get the whole world to become comfortable with the term Madam President.”

Davis, who starred on all 19 episodes of the political drama, wanted the same and hoped “that seeing a woman president onscreen would normalize the idea for people.”

The run of the series was cut short in part by behind-the-scenes problems that led to Lurie’s firing.

“I always think about how much further impact the show would have had if I’d had a longer ‘administration,” Davis, who was nominated for an Emmy for her work, lamented.

The star of films including Thelma & Louise and A League of Their Own has made it her mission to “amplify diversity both in front of and behind the camera” through her Geena Davis Institute. The organization’s website features the slogan, “If they can see it, they can be it.”

Davis explained that gender inequality in entertainment can be a surprisingly quick fix.

“It doesn’t have to be done in stages or phases,” she said. “The next movie or TV show, ad or video game you make, can be gender-balanced with diverse females as leads, supporting characters and extras. We can easily create worlds where women are half of the characters and do half of the interesting things.”

In August 2019, she explained to NPR’s Fresh Air what had inspired her to create the institute.

“My daughter was a toddler, and I decided she was old enough to start watching preschool shows,” Davis said. “So I sat down with her, and the very first show I turned on and watched with her, I pretty much immediately noticed something, and I thought, wait a minute — how many female characters are in this show? And I was counting on my hands as I held her in my lap, and it was horrifying, and I was absolutely stunned. And then I saw it everywhere.”

The representation matters, she argued.

“This struck me very deeply that we’re training kids from the beginning, from minute one of absorbing popular culture, that women and girls are not as important as men and boys, and they’re not as valuable to our society as men and boys,” Davis explained. “And it seemed that, in the 21st century, this was a horrible message to be sending and very shocking.”

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