Equal fights
ON THE BASIS OF SEX I Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s battles for equality make for inspirational drama…
Finally making it to our screens in early 2019, On The Basis Of Sex, a biopic of US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has been in development for years. It featured on the 2014 Black List survey, before Natalie Portman attached herself to star the following year, with Marielle Heller (The Diary Of A Teenage Girl) directing. Five years later, it features Felicity Jones as Bader, while Mimi Leder directs. Some things, it seems, are meant to be, for it’s the perfect fit…
“I felt an instant connection to Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” says Leder.
“I had always known about who she was and her role on the Supreme Court, but I had never really known about her in the personal way in which she’s depicted in the script. I felt that Ruth and I had, in different generations, a lot of commonalities: we are both Jewish women who have had longstanding marriages, and we have broken the glass ceiling for women.”
For anyone not familiar with the work of Ginsburg and/or Leder, the former was one of just nine women in a class of more than 500 entering Harvard Law School in 1956. Graduating head of her class, she was nonetheless turned down by all of the top New York law
firms, until the rise of feminism in the ’70s triggered her focus on sexual discrimination cases and established her as a legal pioneer. (Fittingly, her husband Marty, played by Armie Hammer, became primary carer to their family while Ruth’s career soared.) Leder, meanwhile, directed huge action movies The Peacemaker and Deep Impact in the ’90s (“I was always on trucks with sweaty guys, chasing down a helicopter”). She was the only woman besides Kathryn Bigelow to be afforded such an opportunity, only for the failure of 2000’s Pay It Forward to effectively end her movie career. Until now.
“I was sent to movie jail,” she says, agreeing that such a fate would not have befallen a man with such hits on their CV. “I’ve been working in TV for many years [The West Wing, ER, Nashville, Shameless, The Leftovers] but I wasn’t making films any more. No one was hiring me. But I’m back.”
And what a time to return. For while On The Basis Of Sex has been bubbling away for years, it arrives in the wake of #TimesUp and #MeToo, as Hollywood focuses on pay parity and 50/50 by 2020 to ensure equality and diversity within the industry.
“The movie’s landing at the most perfect time,” says Leder, “and our responsibility is greater than ever.
I still think the movements are in their infancy, and they’re here to stay. Well, Ruth Ginsburg fought hard for equal rights, for all. She was a trailblazer.”