SMART THINKER
Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been a revolutionary figure for decades. Felicity Jones discusses playing the legal legend & cultural icon in On The Basis of Sex.
Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been a revolutionary figure for decades. Felicity Jones discusses playing the legal legend and cultural icon in On The Basis of Sex.
When you play somebody as revered as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it comes with a price. “It was incredibly nerve-racking,” says Felicity Jones, the actor who stars as the iconic Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in the film, On The Basis of Sex. “You don’t take it on lightly. But you don’t want to be too reverential. You want to find all the chinks and the humanity.”
Jones already has experience playing a living person – she won an Oscar nomination for her role as Stephen Hawking’s wife, Jane, in 2014’s The Theory of Everything. But while Jane Hawking lived in the shadow of her husband, Ginsburg has become a true star in her own right, after her book My Own Words – and last year’s critically acclaimed documentary RBG – elevated her status among the younger generations.
Nicknamed ‘The Notorious R.B.G.’ in a nod to rapper Biggie Smalls, 85-year- old Ginsburg has inspired everything from T-shirts to tattoos. No wonder Jones felt such trepidation the first time she met Justice Ginsburg in Washington
DC, accompanying the film’s producers, its director Mimi Leder, and her co- star Armie Hammer – who plays Ginsburg’s husband, Marty.
“We were all nervously short of breath and a little bit clammy, waiting to go in to see her,” she recalls. “She’d approved the casting and she’d been involved, but it was about building up trust between us.”
Luckily, Hammer’s presence at the meeting gave Ginsburg something else to think about. “When she saw Armie, her eyes lit up… this is the man who’s playing my husband!”
Ginsburg’s 56-year marriage to Marty – he died in 2010 – was always on an equal footing. The pair shared the rearing of their two children, with Ginsburg stating, “Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.”
“They weren’t threatened by the success of the other,” says Jones. “They weren’t in competition with each other. It was about men and women – how effective they can be when they work together. They’re on the same side. That’s what makes their relationship so special.”
Clockwise from
far left: Jones as Ginsburg in the film; On- screen couple Jones and Hammer; Ginsburg in her youth; Her field was always maledominated.
Scripted by Ginsburg’s nephew, Daniel Stiepleman, On The Basis of Sex depicts her early years with Marty as she becomes a Harvard law student – one of just nine women in a class of 500. Later, she’s turned down by all the top New York law firms – despite coming first in her graduating year.
“You can be an agent for change no matter where you’re from or who you are.” FELICITY JONES
Jones – an Oxford University graduate who briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a lawyer herself before choosing to read English instead – was “very moved” when they finally met. Why? “Because of the ability of hers to just keep going – that constant feeling of the world being against you.
“Most of us would go, ‘Is it even worth it?’” she says. “‘I’m just going to give up and be a yoga teacher!’ And she didn’t. She went, ‘Hell, I’m going to keep fighting.’”
Jones is thrilled with the film’s positive feedback. “People come out [of the movie] feeling really hopeful,” she says. “Ruth came from very modest circumstances. She didn’t have any connections in law – and she managed to completely redesign the American legal system. It gives everyone a lot of hope – you can be an agent for change no matter where you’re from or who you are.”
As a self-proclaimed “flaming feminist”, Ginsburg is a supporter of the #MeToo movement – and at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, she told attendees that “for so long women were silent, thinking there was nothing you could do about it. But now the law is on the side of women or men who encounter harassment, and that’s a big thing.”
In a 2018 address to Georgetown University students in Washington DC, Ginsburg said, “Every woman of my vintage has not just one story but many stories [of harassment] but we thought that there was nothing you could do about it – ‘ boys will be boys’.”
As for Jones, she is one of RBG’s biggest fans. “With someone like her, it’s not about money or her own kind of vanity. It’s about someone in a leadership position who is fighting for good. It’s a rare thing.”
• On The Basis of Sex opens in cinemas on 7 February.