The First Lady, which stars Gillian Anderson as US presidential wife Eleanor Roosevelt, airs on Showtime on Sunday 17 April in the US.
Gillian has past form on playing real-life figures, proven by her Emmy award win for her turn as UK president Margaret Thatcher in The Crown. However, the Sex Education star has revealed that she feared she wouldn’t be quite up to her role in this new series.
The award-winning actress stars alongside Viola Davis and Michelle Pfeiffer in the drama, which follows the lives of three of America’s first ladies.
The series profiles American political history through three women – Pfeiffer as Betty Ford, who entered the White House in 1974 with husband Gerald, and Viola as the more recent Michelle Obama, wife to Barack.
Gillian, meanwhile, plays opposite Designated Survivor star Kiefer Sutherland as President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
She admitted in a recent interview she had her doubts about the role when she first began considering it – and it was a matter of hitting the heights.
"I was initially stuck a little bit on the fact that she's so much taller than I am,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “She is notoriously tall. And I really wanted to know how production was going to deal with the fact that she had almost seven inches on me.
"I just didn't want audiences to watch and immediately dismiss the interpretation because of that. I had in my head that that was going to be a problem,” she added.
However, the actress – who is reported to measure in at 160cm (5 foot 3 inches) against Roosevelt’s 180cm (5 foot 11 inches) – decided the role was too good to pass up.
“One has to get over whatever hang ups one has, whatever fears, in order to be able to show up and do the best version that you have inside of you,” she said.
The First Lady will launch on Sunday, April 17, on Showtime in the US. In the UK it will arrive on Paramount Plus when the channel launches later this summer.
