In "Confirmation," a new filmed-in-Atlanta movie debuting on April 16 on HBO, Kerry Washington portrays Anita Hill, the University of Oklahoma law professor whose claims of sexual harrassment by her former co-worker Clarence Thomas nearly derailed his Supreme Court nomination in 1991.
It’s a serious topic — despite, or perhaps because of all the lurid talk of pornographic films and pubic hairs on soda cans during a marathon Senate Judiciary Committee hearing — that deserves serious handling. Especially now when another Supreme Court nomination has pretty much paralyzed the Senate along political lines in ways then- Judiciary chair Sen. Joe Biden (Greg Kinnear, looking and sounding spookily like the current vice president) and the rest of “Confirmation’s” real-life counterparts probably couldn’t have anticipated.
Still, it's almost impossible for even a casual "Scandal" viewer to watch Washington's fittingly restrained performance as Hill — a softspoken academic who had to be convinced to come forward as a witness — and not keep thinking about Olivia Pope. What would the ultimate Washington fixer and insider make of Hill, and how would she have advised her to handle this whole mess?
Here are five things we imagine Pope would tell Hill:
Repeat after me, "It's Handled": When Biden phones Hill to tell her the committee has agreed to hear her claims about Thomas and has scheduled her testimony for that Friday, she panics: "Friday? Senator, that's in three days! And I'm supposed to prepare and travel and … ?!" Such a reaction would be completely foreign to Olivia, whose signature catchphrase is "It's handled." And who once helped rig a presidential election and then silence all the people threatening to spill the beans a few years later. Pretty much without breaking a sweat.
Get a different wardrobe: At various times in the movie, Hill is decked out in muted plaid, a dull gray Yale T-shirt (her law school alma mater) and, for her critical testimony, a pale turquoise suit buttoned all the way up to the neck. It all suggests stability and heartland niceness, plus it's historically accurate. But it's not the all-white wardrobe Olivia dons whenever she needs to signal that in a battle between the forces of darkness and light, she's with the good guys. And that she'll win, no questions asked. She'd probably even tell Hill to wear an actual white hat during her testimony.
Get your own Gladiators: The "Gladiators in suits" who work for Olivia Pope & Associates are fiercely loyal to the clients who come to them for crisis management. But the people who convince Hill to testify, notably aides to Democratic Senators Biden and Ted Kennedy (Treat Williams), ultimately can't keep the hearings from veering off on unexpected tangents or Hill's motives and personal history from coming under harsh scrutiny by Republican members of the committee. Everyone's looking out for themselves here, up to and including the White House. Hill needs a Gladiator or two to look out just for her.
Even better, hire Olivia Pope: Seriously, anyone who can make heads or tales of that whole crazy b613 storyline on "Scandal" would have no trouble obtaining the committee's supposedly top-secret material in advance or arranging for certain people to not show up at all. That bizarre monologue by Senator Alan Simpson (Peter McRobbie)?: "I really am getting stuff over the transom about Professor Hill … Statements from Tulsa, Okalahoma, saying, 'Watch out for this woman!' But nobody has the guts to say that because it's all tangled up in this sexual harrassment crap!" It …never …would …have … happened. Four flat tires on Simpson's car that day. On all his cars.
One woman's Cabernet is another one's chop block: "Football?" Hill's lawyer, Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright) wonders aloud when he comes across Hill waiting to testify in a room with an Oklahoma Sooners game playing on the TV. "It relaxes me," she explains. Somewhere, Olivia Pope is tipping her wine glass in complete understanding.
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