Gaslit

Julia Roberts is fantastic as 'mouth of the south' Martha Mitchell in this prestige bit of TV – and she knows it.

This side of the story is superior to the Four-Lions-at-the-White-House farce of the break-in, and it is far more intriguing, though it is fun to see Chris Bauer (of The Wire and The Deuce fame) as the half-chilling, half-bumbling James McCord. There is just a slight sense of unevenness. (This isn’t light on symbolism, and those familiar with the Martha Mitchell side of the story will spot many signposts along the way.) The scene in which he is challenged over the definition of a gemstone is pure silliness, and very funny. Watergate and Nixon are a familiar story to many, though, so in order to breathe some fresh air into it, the series takes a sideways glance, using “mouth of the south” Martha Mitchell (Roberts) and her husband as its way in. It is based on a highly acclaimed podcast, Slow Burn (the Watergate season); it is a period drama that looks the business; it reframes a well-known historical story; and it is led by A-list movie stars, in this case Julia Roberts and Sean Penn. Once, this combination of ingredients would have made Gaslit a rare delicacy. It plays many of the macho antics for comedy, which works well, because it is often dealing with belief-defying stupidity. Plenty of people saw the clip of Dan Stevens on The One Show that went viral recently.

Stevens was initially keen to sit down with the Republican lawyer, but the actor changed his mind once word got out of the planned meeting.

A bit more money and the same thing for another decade,” Stevens replies, “or the great unknown. “But the question is what would satisfy you? Stevens says now, “It’s not something I expect people to readily understand.

Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, Dan Stevens, Betty Gilpin and more star in this political thriller that lacks cohesion.

Shea Wigham in "Gaslit" (Starz)"Gaslit" sizzles with some hilarious lines, not all of them spoken by Martha, who does get zingers like: "Jesus Christ wouldn't make it through the Republican primary." And a lot to try to balance. The gaslighting of the title doesn't begin right away, it isn't the biggest part and it's also an anachronism to call the show after a kind of psychological abuse that would not be known to Martha or any of the characters at the time. "Gaslit" is being billed as the Julia Roberts show, but it's really an ensemble piece. Over the course of the seven episodes given for review, it sparks the most when the minor characters are allowed to take the stage. His portrayal of John Mitchell stands out in the series, as does, of course, Julia Roberts as his wife, Martha. Deeply loving, deeply violent and always sparring, increasingly desperately, the two have a relationship that recalls another Martha, from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Julia Roberts stars as the wife of John Mitchell, President Richard M. Nixon's attorney general at the time of the scandal.

The men of "Gaslit" are preoccupied with shifting blame and sticking others with assignments that will backfire on them in the end. Martha Mitchell wasn't good, not in the way the patriarchy demanded in 1972 and beyond. Roberts said on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" that Martha Mitchell would be popular today. From the vast distance of 50 years, the events of Watergate seem a tame precursor to the assaults on democracy that America faces today. In one scene, "Gaslit" even coyly plays on past adaptation of the story like the 1976 film version of "All the President's Men." It shows Bob Woodward, shown only from the back, slipping into a court hearing for the burglars. It's "Lord of the Flies" with black suits and stiff cocktails before dinner. Roberts is superb as she reveals the toll the smear campaign took on Mitchell and her marriage, which is rooted in real passion but threatened by her husband's wavering loyalty. "Gaslit" describes Mitchell in its press notes as "the first person to publicly connect the Nixon administration to Watergate." But in real life, she was no progressive whistleblower. After the bungled 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee's offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., leaves members of Nixon's team scrambling to cover up their dirty deeds, Mitchell becomes a potential liability for the White House. The effort to keep her quiet results in her being drugged and virtually kept prisoner for days. In the early 1970s, Mitchell was discredited by the Nixon administration as mentally unstable. And if that doesn't conform to the president's message, so be it. A biography of Martha Mitchell by journalist Winzola McLendon describes a floral arrangement sent to her 1976 funeral by an unidentified fan.

Julia Roberts plays Martha Mitchell in Gaslit, an entertaining new Starz series about the Watergate scandal that ended Richard Nixon's presidency.

Like so many of the decisions made in Gaslit, it is a show of devotion that is born out of a dangerous delusion, one which prioritizes power and position over morality. The series, which was created by Robbie Pickering and directed in its entirety by Matt Ross (Captain Fantastic), occasionally attempts to broaden its scope and paint a comprehensive portrait of 1970s American society, but it is only intermittently successful at doing that. If Martha and John are on the downslope of a once-great marriage when Gaslit begins, then John Dean (Dan Stevens) and Maureen “Mo” Kane (Betty Gilpin) are, as Martha sadly observes in the show’s premiere, at “the beginning of something.” John’s a member of Nixon’s White House counsel and Mo’s a stewardess. As a result, much of the drama in Gaslit stems from Martha and John’s toxic relationship, one that ricochets between loving and sexual to abusive and demeaning repeatedly throughout the series. Opposite her, Penn is fittingly sleazy — if a little underused — as John Mitchell, a political scumbag of the highest order who is brought to life in the show via several layers of impressive prosthetic makeup. It’s a show that charts the downfall of Richard Nixon’s presidency but rarely shows the man himself because it’s too busy investigating the motivations of the men (and women) who were willing to commit treason for him.

Julia Roberts is returning to television to play Martha Mitchell, the wife of John Mitchell who became a source of controversy due to her outspoken comments ...

That Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globes-winning actress has starred in Mystic Pizza, Pretty Women, Erin Brockovich, and Homecoming. Martha’s husband John N. Mitchell, Attorney General under President Nixon, is played by Sean Penn. The Oscar-winning actor is best known for his roles in Mystic River, Milk, and 21 Grams. Altogether, there will be eight episodes in this STARZ miniseries. Little by little it would eventually be revealed that the group that orchestrated this break in was connected to President Nixon’s administration.

'Gaslit' premiere recap: Martha Mitchell struggles with her marriage and politics, while John Dean is drawn into the Watergate conspiracy.

John invites her to the fundraiser anyways and once she finds out it’s for the Mitchells, she promises to think about it. Dean changes his mind about resigning and exits the office. But later, Dean “runs into” Mo at the airport (he stalked the hell out of her), and she calls him “a little psychopath” for tracking her down. The election is around the bend, and Mitchell asks Martha to keep things quiet for just a few more months. He was manipulated by Mitchell. “Learn to recognize a snake when you see one,” Haldeman suggests. To thank Dean for his work, Mitchell invites him to Martha’s fundraiser at his house. Martha says she learned long ago that she will say how she feels, and if it doesn’t conform to the president’s message, so be it. (Mostly because Liddy seems like a total nutjob who might murder him where he stands.) But that said, Dean says they should never talk about it ever again. It’s a tale woven deeply into the fabric of American history, but here it’s told with a quirky sense of humor and from a fresh new angle. Dean goes to see his boss, John Mitchell, who says he’s “re-evaluating” personnel. “History isn’t written by the feeble masses — the pissants, the commies, the queers and the women,” the political zealot tells us. Thus is our introduction to this fresh spin on Nixon’s re-election campaign and the scandal that followed, only this time, the story revolves around the lesser-known character who made up his inner circle.

In Starz's new Gaslit, premiering Sunday, central Watergate figure John Dean is played by Dan Stevens. In White House Plumbers, an upcoming HBO limited ...

In his book, Chapin writes that as Watergate began to unfold, Martha “spoke of things she claimed to know — and in some cases actually did know — which caused a huge problem for our administration.” That is a version different than has been depicted in a number of movies and books — including those that will unfold over the next few months. “I hope this helps us re-examine the stories we tell ourselves about history, and the heroes we make, and how selective we are about those heroes,” Pickering says. In his book, Chapin lays out a view that challenges the image of Dean as a heroic figure, but rather someone who bore much responsibility for engulfing the White House in the debacle, keeping Nixon in the dark. Chapin says that he got to know reporter Carl Bernstein when he was living in East Hampton, N.Y., and the historical narrative proved to be a topic of debate. You look at it an he only testified out of convenience, well why does John Dean get lionized as a hero for the rest of time, but Martha is forgotten?” “I think that’s all of us at a certain base level — moron — and it comes from emotional need and emotional messiness. All the President’s Men is one of the great all-time classics of moviemaking, and has probably done more to keep Watergate in the sphere of relevance than another other film. A Netflix documentary, The Martha Mitchell Effect, focuses on the wife of Attorney General and later Nixon election campaign chair John Mitchell. “Watergate is one of those stories where hubris brings nemesis,” says Tim Naftali, clinical associate professor of public service at New York University and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “It makes it a source of optimism for people who felt that Donald Trump somehow escaped justice, escaped sort of a reckoning. “The story is picaresque, with weird and wonderful characters including Martha Mitchell, but it’s also a drama that played out differently from something that we all watched. He says that they did focus group interviews as part of the renovation of the Richard Nixon Library “and Watergate would come up as a curiosity.

The beating heart of Starz's new Watergate drama, Gaslit, is its depiction of the volatile marriage between President Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell ...

Mitchell said she was held hostage in the hotel room for days and was even pinned to the ground by the guards and injected with sedatives. Things got much worse for John Mitchell that fall when The Washington Post reported that he was in charge of a secret Republican slush fund used to gather intelligence on potential threats to President Nixon. He denied it, but as we know now, the reporting checked out. So Mitchell suggested his wife stay out on the west coast for some additional r&r while he returned to D.C.. On his way out the door, Mitchell ordered his security guards to keep Martha in the dark about the news and asked them to prevent her from reaching out to any reporters. “It could have been worse,” Mitchell said to the press after receiving his sentence. An article in McCall’s recalls headlines from the time reading "MITCHELL GIVES UP POLITICS FOR LOVE." This was after weeks of Martha phoning reporters and intimating about the Watergate and the ensuing cover-up. Nixon’s staffers labeled her a desperate alcoholic in the papers and spread rumors about her “mental instabilities” on television. As the head of CREEP, Mitchell was the one to give G. Gordon Liddy the green light to break into Watergate. (Fun fact: As a kid growing up in New Jersey, G. Gordon Liddy used to eat rats to strengthen his resolve. Never one to hold her tongue, Martha Mitchell and her penchant for gossip found a welcome audience in the D.C. press. According to the article, Mitchell often greeted his wife with “an unruffled ‘Hi gorgeous.’” In the same piece, Martha says, “John is an extremely outstanding person.” She claimed that nothing bothered him. Nixon was forced to resign in no small part due to Martha Mitchell’s whistleblowing, John Mitchell was in prison due to his misplaced loyalty to Nixon, and Martha Mitchell was left penniless and on the verge of death due to the Nixon administration’s ruthless corruption and her husband’s cowardly cruelty. Martha Mitchell (née Beall) was born in 1918 in rural Arkansas. Her father was a cotton broker, and her mother was a teacher. When Nixon decided to run for president in 1968, he tapped Mitchell to oversee his campaign.

Gaslit review: Julia Roberts and Sean Penn's performances are the icing on the cake in this gripping watch that takes a fresh, semi-humourous angle on the ...

And Gaslit talks about these issues as something contemporary and relevant even if the story itself is dated. In places, it does look like the show is trying too much and achieving too little, in terms of finesse at least, if not entertainment. It is almost three tales in one—the first being the story of the Mitchells and the rise and fall of their marriage and political careers. As a viewer, I wished there was more of these two in the narrative. Granted, Sean Penn’s prosthetics and make-up help in making him unrecognisable but the actor brings out his A-game to infuse life into John Mitchell. Julia Roberts is easily his match as the outspoken and witty socialite Martha. They both ensure that their portrayal, while accurate, does not fall into the caricature zone. It decided to tell the story as one of incompetence.

Sean Penn and Julia Roberts lead a stacked cast in Starz's 'Gaslit', which has the verve of a Coen brothers film and the political sophistication of ...

Actually, Penn is extremely good, sunk into his triple chin, chewing his pipe, and snarling at his subordinates. I have made time to preview Gaslit, Starz’s extremely enjoyable and brilliantly cast history lesson about the Watergate fallout, which debuted on 24 April and runs for eight weekly episodes. I was almost relieved at the news that Netflix is suddenly losing subscribers – and expecting to lose more.

Meet the creeps behind the Watergate scandal. A recap of “Will,” episode 1 and the premiere of the Starz miniseries “Gaslit.” Based on the Slate podcast, ...

Mo sees Dean in the coatroom having a chat with the Mitchells’ daughter, who’s hiding because she hates her dress and her parents are fighting in their room (this fight is where the aforementioned physical and verbal abuse comes in the most). Dean is incredibly kind to the daughter, and Mo later tells him he’s a good person deep down, even when no one is watching. John Dean picks up Mo for the party and her roommate has a shirt that says “Lick Dick in ’72,” which is an A+ shirt. He makes it all the way into Mitchell’s empty office with the letter when he sees a note on Mitchell’s desk about Nixon being “very pleased” with Dean. So he stays with the corrupt administration. He later makes it up (?) to her by calling the FAA to get Mo’s work schedule and then accidentally-on-purpose bumps into her at the airport, which she says pilots have done to her before. Liddy finds Magruder in the lunchroom and tells him about the new plan that Mitchell has approved. John Ehrlichman (John Ehrlichman) was counsel and assistant to the president for domestic affairs from 1969 to 1973 (wow, a lot of people’s careers ended in ’73; a true mystery). (He’s also never met the president.) So he says, Hey, I know a great guy, Gordon Liddy (mistakes one and two, John), and he says he’ll contact him. She tells John it must be difficult to work for Nixon since he’s a terrible person who lied about ending the war and increased bombings. He has a plan called Operation Gemstone, which has 11 gemstone plans within it (except quartz which, as Magruder points out, is a mineral), and four subparts. And that he is incredibly devoted to Richard Nixon. What I found funny is that his opening monologue is about how history isn’t written by the feeble masses, like commies, queers, and women, and look at the queer woman telling your story now, Liddy. And with that, let’s look at the rest of our cast of characters! Calling them both John all the time would get confusing, but I call the women characters by their first name, and I would like some parity there. H.R. “Bob” Haldeman (Nat Faxon) is someone I only heard about through the 30 Rock episode “Rosemary’s Baby” when Carrie Fisher says a mailbox falling over was Haldeman. He was Nixon’s White House chief of staff from 1969 to 1973.