Powerhouse television producer Shonda Rhimes, known for “Scandal” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” and actor Morgan Freeman came together to create a biographical film on Hillary Clinton for the final night of the Democratic National Convention.
The 12-minute video, which played before Clinton gave her historic speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president — the first woman to receive the honor from a major party — depicts Clinton through her childhood and career, focusing heavily on her mother’s history as an impoverished child.
Rhimes, whose shows all feature strong female leads, humanized a candidate who herself noted, during her speech Thursday night, that she has long been more comfortable with the “service” part of public service than the “public” part.
With testimonials from her husband, former President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama, a 9/11 survivor and first responder, and a lifelong friend, Freeman narrated.
“Here is a woman, making her first marks on the world. She is, we all know, bright and promising, an achiever, and yet, extraordinarily, what is most striking about the young woman, is her heart,” Freeman said over photos of Clinton.
These shots were intercut with Clinton, seated at a kitchen table, offering insights into her past and her values.
Clinton described her mother’s neglect-filled upbringing, as well as what it was like to be in the Situation Room with Obama and other national security officials witnessing Navy Seals kill al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011.
“When the opportunity arose to be a part of the small group advising the president about whether the intelligence we had was strong enough for him to act, I took that responsibility personally. And on behalf of the 3,000 people who were murdered, the tens of thousands of loved ones who were left behind, the horror that was inflicted on our country,” Clinton recalled.
“We’ll never quite know what it felt like to be in that room. But look at her, look at her face. She’s carrying the hope and the rage of an entire nation,” Freeman says as a photograph shows Clinton and other officials in the Situation Room with Obama.
In an interview with People, Rhimes said that she was happy to put together the biographical piece.
“As a writer who builds characters for a living, it was exciting to take an actual human being and pieces of who she is and see how it builds a person and her character, why she is who she is,” Rhimes said. “Given the Trumpiness of the world today, we felt like we were doing the work of angels.”
