Mrs. America series premiere review: Meet Phyllis Schlafly

In the series premiere of the stylish and competent Mrs. America, viewers meet Cate Blanchett’s eager and icy Phyllis Schlafly in a bustling 1971 landscape.

Mrs. America is FX’s new, stylish look into the 1970s battle between the women’s liberation movement and the rising conservatives who oppose them, centered around the fight to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. It’s also the brand’s first show to stream exclusively on Hulu.

The first episode, “Phyllis,” introduces viewers to Phyllis Schlafly (portrayed by Cate Blanchett), the politically engaged Illinois homemaker who would eventually keep the Equal Rights Amendment (hereafter ERA) from passing.

In the show’s opening moments, Blanchett stuns in a red, white, and blue swimsuit for a political fundraiser, gaining a partnership with her local United States Representative, Phil Crane (a never smarmier James Marsden).

Mrs. America makes it clear early on that Phyllis is highly intelligent, knowledgeable, and driven. At the entry point of the series, she’s already run for office once and is planning for a second run. She can spout more Constitutional knowledge than any of the men around her.

The show also doesn’t work hard to pick a political ethos from the beginning. It doesn’t villainize Phyllis. It instead shows how and why a 1970s housewife would find feminism so terrifying that she would do everything she could to stop it.

That doesn’t mean we should root for her, of course. Mrs. America smartly places women around Phyllis who she never recognizes as being a potential “libber.” For one, there’s her Black maid Willie. (Yes, she has a Black housekeeper. Of course she does.)

One of the smartest things about Mrs. America is its editing. It seamlessly weaves together the people who were all existing together in this time as one big cohesive fabric.

Shirley Chisholm, America’s first Black woman elected to Congress, (a pitch-perfect Uzo Aduba) is casually introduced in a background scene early in the episode. In the back half, however, we see Willie watching Chisholm in an interview on television, and the quiet smile takes over her face as she draws inspiration from her talking about the ERA, right there in Phyllis Schlafly’s home.

After a dispiriting meeting in Washington (Phyllis is reminded with multiple demeaning moments that she is still subject to sexism), Phyllis decides not to run, but instead pursue a full-throated attack on the ERA.

This culminates in an incredible monologue delivered during a DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) luncheon, natch. Blanchett taps into a naturalistic madness while also feeling like the second incarnation of Joseph Goebbels as she whips the women into a frenzy.

The scene distills so many fears of conservatives at the time (and some now). Women working out the home? It’s not natural! If men and women are equal, then baby girls would be drafted (this at the height of Vietnam, of course).

While some of Phyllis’s argument ends up being correct (many working women have ended up with two full-time jobs as caretaker at home and whatever they do for work), some of it is ludicrous, too. And eventually, it circles around to the argument that all feminists must be man-haters.

Her sister, the marvelous Jeanne Tripplehorn, who earlier in the episode cried about being unmarried and having no children, watches in shock as Phyllis gleefully mocks the libbers essentially for being spinsters saying, “None of them can find a man who wants to marry them.”

While the rest of the DAR ladies laugh, Phyllis’s sister is stricken; this is the perfect recipe for Grade A drama and conflict. As the episode ends, Phyllis makes branded letterhead with her own face on it to send out The Phyllis Schlafly Report warning homemakers everywhere of the dangers of the ERA.

And you have to admit, it’s kind of iconic in its insanity.

This leads us perfectly into “enemy” waters: the libbers who have gotten their hands on the propaganda. Mrs. America has managed to assemble quite possibly the best cast ever on television.

In one chaotic final sequence, we meet Bella Abzug (character actress Margo Martindale) through perfect dialogue:

"Aide:  “Did you call the Speaker of the House a four letter word?”Bella:  “No.”Aide:  “Are you sure?”Bella:  “Yes, I’m sure. Ass is a three letter word.”"

The rest of the women gather to discuss the progress of the ERA (casually dismissing Phyllis’s pamphlet) and every inch of the screen is an embarrassment of riches. Mrs. America is a treat unlike any other, and we can’t wait to see how the series progresses.

What did you think of the premiere of Mrs. America? Tell us what you liked and didn’t like in the comments below!