Gloria Steinem on ‘The Glorias’ biopic, losing Ruth Bader Ginsburg: ‘We are not going back, no way’
Gloria Steinem still won’t give an inch.
As the nation mourns the loss of trailblazing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the feminist activist and icon continues to push for progress even as Democrats and Republicans battle over the filling of the newly vacant Supreme Court seat.
“There are a lot more of us than there are of them,” Steinem, 86, said with a chuckle as she spoke to the Daily News last weekend from Santa Barbara, Calif.
“We are in a much better position than we ever were because we now have the majority of the country on our side,” added the Ms. magazine co-founder. “It’s true that the third of the country that’s in revolt against all the social justice movements has a president, but the huge majority opinion agrees with the social justice movements. So we are not going back, no way.”
Steinem, who was portrayed earlier this year in FX’s “Mrs. America,” is now the focus of Julie Taymor’s sprawling new biopic, “The Glorias,” available Sept. 30 on Amazon Prime and streaming.
Based on Steinem’s 2015 memoir “My Life on the Road” — the film explores her formative experiences across “six or seven decades and two continents.” The movie delves into her upbringing, the decision to have an abortion when it was still illegal, the years she lived in India and the misogyny she faced.
The titular Glorias — Oscar winners Alicia Vikander and Julianne Moore, as well as Ryan Kiera Armstrong and Lulu Wilson, portray Steinem at different ages — ride a special Greyhound bus and communicate with one another across time, each serving as a sounding board and conscience.
Asked what she would tell her 20-year-old self today, Steinem said, “My first impulse is just to say, ‘It’s going to be all right.’” She added that her 20-, 30-, and 40-year-old self “was being told by society that women were supposed to do certain things that I wasn’t doing.
“We were supposed to have regular jobs, we were supposed to marry and have children,” she continued. “And it wasn’t that I didn’t respect those things. I did, but ... I was living in a different way. And until the women’s movement came along to tell me it was all right, I was rebelling but hoping no one would notice, if you know what I mean.”
Though Steinem “had no idea how” Taymor would manage to cover so much of her life, she says her faith was well placed.
“I think women supporting women is critical,” Taymor, 67, told The News. “Our movie is a love story between women. And I don’t mean a sexual love story, I mean a passionate love story about women supporting women, getting out there, having ideals that they share. The men in Gloria’s life, there were lots of them, but I don’t concentrate on that.”
Though she was certainly hooked by Steinem’s journey, the “Frida” filmmaker loved detailing how instrumental women of color, such as activists Wilma Mankiller and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, were in the women’s movement.
“It’s mistakenly thought that it was a white woman’s movement and it isn’t. And I think that this movie and Gloria’s life testifies to that,” explained Taymor.
The “on the road” device was another selling point for the director, who noted that women rarely star in road or buddy films.
“You’ve got ‘Thelma & Louise,’ right? And they die. They die at the end. It doesn’t turn out well,” laughed Taymor. “Gloria says in her book, people mistakenly think that staying home is much safer for women. But she points out that the most dangerous place for many women is the home. ... She came alive on the road, meeting other women, meeting other men. She’s able to cross gender, racial, and cultural lines like nobody I’ve ever seen.”
Ultimately, Steinem hopes the film will point out to viewers “that each of us has a story and we need to tell it. This is how we learn, this is how we teach, this is how we find a community. So, you know, I hope that the improbability and, in a way, the kind of ordinariness of my story and the stories within it ... they will feel encouraged by something in the movie to tell their own story.”
