Straight off a flight from Los Angeles, Mimi Leder means business. To hell with the jet lag, she arrives in full swing, ready to talk. Perhaps it’s no surprise. For a director who has gone from Hollywood action vehicles like Deep Impact and The Peacemaker to cult TV series The Leftovers, she’s back with what is arguably the most important film of her career, On the Basis of Sex. A biopic of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the liberal Supreme Court Justice who has done so much for gender equality in the United States, Leder was hooked from the off.
“When I read this script, I thought, ‘I have to direct this film. I know how to tell this story. We share so many commonalities,’” Leder explains, arranging herself on a comfy-looking sofa in a Claridges suite. “We’re both Jewish. We both have children. We both have long-term marriages.” While Leder is wed to actor Gary Werntz, Ginsberg was married to her bedrock of a husband, Marty, for 56 years, until he died in 2010. “The movie is so much about how love prevails and how they had this equal partnership in their marriage which was a real metaphor for the film.”
Leder’s film is actually the second movie this year to feature Ginsberg, after the hit documentary RBG, which examined her cult status among younger generations. Nicknamed ‘The Notorious RBG’, a nod to fellow Brooklynite, the rapper Biggie Smalls, the 85 year-old Ginsberg has become an icon for many, with her image appearing on everything from tattoos to T-Shirts to Tumblr accounts. Starring British actress Felicity Jones as Ginsberg, On The Basis of Sex is the perfect companion piece; think of it as RBG: The Early Years.
Scripted by Ginsberg’s nephew Daniel Stiepleman, who spent hours with his aunt talking through her life, the film begins in 1956, charting her rise from Harvard law student — where she was just one of nine women in a class of 500 — through to her first landmark case in 1972, when she took up the cause of Charles E. Moritz. A Colorado singleton, Moritz was denied a tax exemption — designed for women only — after quitting his job to care for his ailing mother.
While the film stops in the mid-Seventies, Ginsberg most certainly did not. Her work continued and her reputation grew. In 1993, she was appointed to the Supreme Court, receiving a remarkable 96 votes for to three against. Bringing a left-leaning (and female) voice to this most hallowed of American institutions was essential, notes Leder. “They have so much power. It’s not an offshoot of the White House. It’s a completely separate entity to protect the laws that exist and to change them, like Ruth did, when the culture changes.”
To prepare for the film, Leder spent some one-on-one time with the 5ft-tall Ginsberg. “Meeting her is very intimidating,” she says. “She’s this little thing, very tiny, very powerful. I was so intimidated! And it takes a lot to intimidate me!” When they went for dinner the following night, Leder pumped her full of questions about her life with Marty. “It was like going out on a first date,” she says. “I had to ask her things like, ‘How did you know he was the one?’ She would say, ‘We dated for two years and we were friends but of course he wanted more than friendship.’ She was very forthcoming.”
Eventually, Leder introduced her to Jones and Armie Hammer, cast as her beloved Marty, in her private chambers at the Supreme Court. “She was very taken with Armie! Oh my God, it was hilarious!” she chuckles. Ginsberg, who clearly saw something of her husband in the actor, even gave Hammer a copy of Chef Supreme, a book of Marty’s recipes (he was an avid cook). “She gave him that book and she didn’t give Felicity anything! So I was walking out with Felicity going, ‘Don’t worry, she’s boy crazy!’ It was kinda funny.”
Originally, the film was set to star Natalie Portman (who is Jewish), but after development delays, the role went to Jones, who previously won an Oscar nomination for her performance as Jane Hawking, the wife to renowned physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. “Everything I’ve seen her in, she just dives in and creates these characters that are so powerful and unique,” says Leder. “So I felt she was the one.” Jones’ “deep study” included emulating Ginsberg’s walk and accent and even wearing teeth caps.
The question is: Will the film simply preach to the liberal choir? Or can it go further? Leder recalls a test screening where a Republican woman, impressed by the movie, admitted she planned to tell all her friends to go see it. “I think that our film will reach both sides,” says the director. “It’s a film about humanity. It’s a film about social justice. It’s a film about equality. And it’s a film about how we all rise. And all rise with the things that are right in this world — at least that is my hope.”
Raised in Los Angles, Leder’s mother Etyl was a Holocaust survivor from Brussels, who had been held at Auschwitz and later became a classical pianist. Her father, Paul, meanwhile, was a low-budget writer-director, who made B movies like Sketches of a Strangler and The Baby Doll Murders. While she and her two siblings worked on her father’s films, it was enough to inspire Leder towards showbiz; after studying at the American Film Institute Conservatory, she began work as a script supervisor, on films and later the TV cop show Hill Street Blues.
It was during this period that Leder first experienced the sort of prejudice that Ginsberg was fighting against after being promised to direct an episode of Hill Street Blues. “I was signed up and then they fired me before I ever did the job. And I asked them why. They said, ‘You’re not qualified to direct.’” To make matters worse, two men — an assistant director and a location manager, who had never directed “and never went on to have a career” — were hired instead. At the time, it was just the norm. “I came up when there were very few women in the business,” she sighs.
Fortunately, things did change for her. After giving birth to her daughter, Hannah, Leder was eventually hired to direct two episodes of L.A. Law. Cutting her teeth on TV, even winning two Emmy awards for her work on E.R., Leder then made the move into Hollywood with the 1998 blockbuster Deep Impact. Hired by Sherry Lansing at Paramount, it was a significant moment, one that Ginsberg herself would’ve been proud of, with Leder in charge of a huge action movie. “It was the highest-grossing movie ever made by a woman until Cathrine Hardwicke did Twilight [in 2008],” she states.
Unfortunately, Deep Impact didn’t open the floodgates for female directors in the way it should’ve done. “When I was coming up directing TV, I would hire a lot of women. But then I think it got to be, ‘We’ve hired enough women!’ It was a fad. Now I think there are so many more women directing television and this year there is a huge number of films for women, more than there ever have been. But it’s definitely not gender parity yet. It’s definitely not equal. More women are being hired — that’s the truth. But not enough.”
It’s why people like Ruth Bader Ginsberg have been so vital. “She will never give up. She’s faced so much adversity. She’s had cancer twice. She plans to stay on until she’s 90. We need her desperately because America has gone bad…not all of America, but a section of America.”
What about when she does retire? Does Leder fear what might happen if Donald Trump is still in charge? “When she leaves? I’m praying he’ll not be our president anymore by that time so we’ll have somebody of sanity in the White House.” Now that is a wish many will hope comes to pass.
On The Basis of Sex opens on February 22nd.
