Hulu’s Hillary: A portrait of America’s most hated woman

The four-part docuseries Hillary explores the public and private life of Hillary Clinton as never seen before. But will audiences learn from it?

The four-part documentary Hillary premiered at Sundance at the beginning of the year, but it dropped on Hulu on March 6. In some ways, the docuseries is entirely run of the mill, chronicling Hillary Clinton’s life from her childhood in Illinois to her early romance with husband (and former president) Bill to her eventual campaigns for president.

But anchored around an incredible 35 hours of interviews with the winner of the 2016 popular vote, Hillary mines new ground with one of the most well-known public figures of our time. Early in the first episode, Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s former senior policy director, states that the central problem with her is that “…she is both one of the most admired and most vilified women in American history.”

This central thesis guides the documentary, examining her life in the public eye from her controversial early days as the first lady of Arkansas (when people hated her for keeping her maiden name) to her eventual popularity as Secretary of State during Barack Obama’s first term.

For those who knew the history of the Clintons, much of the biographical portions of the documentary will be standard and unsurprising. But for those who don’t realize that Hillary Clinton is responsible for the CHIP program, or never learned about her groundbreaking speech at the U.N. on women in 1995, eliciting the famous quotation, “Women’s rights are human rights,” learning the breadth of Clinton’s political and feminist achievements may be a surprise.

For the stalwarts who hate Hillary Clinton and always have, they likely won’t walk away from Hillary moved to find they feel differently. But the docuseries does a good job of examining the public’s intense hatred of her for the last 30 years.

There are stellar moments with others interviewed in the documentary as well. Clinton’s husband, Bill, is notably reflective and, for possibly the first time ever, somewhat apologetic concerning his role in the multiple sex scandals, and eventual impeachment trial, that swallowed up his second term in the White House.

The documentary’s coverage of the 2016 election is also equal parts heartbreaking, vindicating, and fascinating, flitting from the Clinton team’s discussions on how to best handle Trump (which, still, no one knows how to do) to Clinton’s present-day disgust for Bernie Sanders.

Overall, the documentary seems to serve as both a warning and a template for women who may want to enter into public service in the future. Hillary offers a list of don’ts while also showing that women bear the ultimate burden of the double bind. In a classic HRC moment, she explains that simply by virtue of doing hair and makeup on the campaign trail everyday — something her male opponents didn’t have to do — she was at a disadvantage for time (nearly 25 days by her math).

It also drops at a particularly poignant moment, just days after Elizabeth Warren ended her candidacy for president. In the final moments of Hillary, Clinton’s 2016 concession speech plays as she reflects on her loss:

"“…to all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”"

Clinton notes that the 2020 election gives her hope and specifically calls out all of the female nominees running. But, of course, it was filmed long before they all eventually dropped out of the race.

Many of us thought lessons had been learned since 2016, that a woman could hold the highest office in the land. But Elizabeth Warren, whose campaign course-corrected for many of the things Clinton didn’t, echoed the same sentiment Clinton said four years ago:

"“One of the hardest parts of this is all those … little girls who are gonna have to wait four more years.”"

Perhaps the best lesson to be learned from Hillary is that no public figure is perfect, but the standards for women are that much higher. And if we keep them that way, we’ll never be able to move forward.

Hillary is currently streaming on Hulu. Have you started the docuseries yet?