Mrs. America & TV’s Dimensional Feminism

TV writer and producer April Smith returns to chat with host Cynthia Bemis Abrams about layered storytelling, the politics of representation, and what it means to write truthfully in different eras of feminism. They discuss Smith’s work on the 2020 Hulu series Mrs. America, which dramatized the women’s movement of the 1970s and the political resistance to the Equal Rights Amendment. Together, they also explore Smith’s legacy on shows like Lou Grant and Cagney & Lacey, where she wrote from within the male-dominated writers’ rooms. This episode explores: Writing sexual harassment and power dynamics into scripts long before #MeToo How producers and writers shaped the tone of early feminist TV April Smith’s shift from television into award-winning historical fiction The reality of being the only woman in the room—and what has (or hasn’t) changed Insight into how Mrs. America created multi-dimensional portrayals of iconic feminists Referenced works: Mrs. America (Hulu, 2020) Lou Grant episode on harassment https://youtu.be/I5mQzNo-nLM?si=rU6u5Fyre4XLWRA0 Lou Grant: The Making of TV’s Top Newspaper Drama by Douglass K. Daniel Previous April Smith episode of Advanced TV Herstory: Episode 3.25 https://aprilsmith.net/