Yahoo News The ‘Girls on the Bus’ Finale Had a Cathartic Showdown with a Fake Hillary Clinton
[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for the season finale of “The Girls on the Bus.”]
In the Season 1 finale of Max’s “Girls on the Bus,” Sadie (Melissa Benoist) has a tense conversation with Governor Walker (Hettienne Park) that had been building all season. And that’s hardly all.
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Walker is a pretty obvious stand-in for Hillary Clinton in the show’s version of a Democratic presidential primary. In Episode 10, written by co-creator Amy Chozick, Walker has just learned that, despite being the most experienced and likely best person for the job, she was going to fall short of getting the necessary delegates to clench the nomination for president. Political journo Sadie comes to speak to Gov. Walker while she’s drowning her sorrows on a campaign bus, and apologizes for how her coverage of her has hurt her over the years — but also lay out her own frustrations about the enigma that is the governor.
The series is based on Chozick’s memoir “Chasing Hillary,” about her time covering the Hillary Clinton campaign, and it’s not too big of a leap to assume that through Sadie, Chozick is saying the kind of things she wishes she could say to Secretary Clinton about their own contentious relationship, which of course would never happen in real life.
“Really, I have to credit [showrunner Rina Mimoun],” Chozick told IndieWire about writing the big scene. “The question Rina would always ask me is: ‘What conversation did you not get to have that you wish [you did]? What never happened in real life that you can actually do now in fiction?’ I’ve spent years talking and thinking about [that]. What would the conversation be between Sadie and the female candidate if you could have had this conversation?”
She continued, “A major quote in that scene is is what Hillary [also] said at the Javits Center: ‘They were never gonna let me be president,’ so we used that [as a] jumping off. This is drawn from covering Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. I even covered Marianne Williamson, a lot of the women I spent time with, but basically being able to fantasize about what those conversations would be. … [When we filmed it], we were in video village, just crying.”
“[That scene] became our true north in some ways,” Mimoun said of the climactic confrontation. “One of the things that I love about the show so much and I loved working with Amy on is, there’s lots of love stories on TV and that was a love story between those two women. It was heartbreaking, like really heartbreaking. And that was a goal post for us that we wanted to hit. … I think, for me, it was, in many ways, the most important scene and I knew Amy was going to crush [writing] it. And she did.”
“It felt very cathartic,” Chozick confirmed.
Elsewhere in the finale, Hot White Guy (Scott Foley) snags the nomination for President, right around the time that Sadie gets her hands on confidential documents that show he’s got some big secrets in his past, not to mention that powerful tech bro backer who recently died. The show concludes with Sadie — having snuck the documents to her fellow gals on the bus to hide — being led away by the FBI. So, yeah, things aren’t going great.
As for Season 2? While the show has yet to be officially renewed, Mimoun noted to IndieWire she has a three-season plan in her head about where “Girls on the Bus” can go next.
“I want to play more in the world of misinformation in Season 2,” Chozick said. “So I think if you watch the finale, you [see] Sadie was around a very prominent person and [he died] and there might be some conspiracies spreading about her involvement. We definitely want to play more in conspiracy theory.”
All aboard.
“The Girls on the Bus” Season 1 is streaming now on Max.
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