Why Hillary Clinton Decided to Tell Her Story In a Doc Series on Hulu

In a new documentary series, premiering in March, Clinton revisits her entire history, from growing up in a Chicago suburb to speaking at her college graduation, to meeting Bill Clinton in law school, all mixed in with what eventually happened when she ran for President in 2016.

Clinton was on stage at the TV Critics Association winter press tour on Friday with documentarian Nanette Burstein to talk about the series, which is also heading to Sundance Film Festival this year. The very first question was, of course, why she wanted to do this and if anything was off limits.

“There was nothing off limits,” she said. “As Nanette will tell you, this did not start out as the film it ended up being. It really started out as a campaign documentary, because we had about 1700 hours of behind-the-scenes footage, some of which is in the movie.”

The series isn’t just official footage of Clinton’s speeches and public appearance, but also behind-the-scenes footage of Clinton getting her makeup done, bantering with Burstein and people like Kate McKinnon, before going on stage at Saturday Night Live.

Burstein said that Clinton didn’t change when the cameras were off from how she was when they were on.

“I think it felt all very genuine, and I think that was OK,” Burstein said.

“I became a kind of Rorschach test for women and women’s roles as soon as I burst onto the public scene when Bill was running for president,” she said. “You know I lived more than 40 years before that, and I had a real understanding of what it meant to be thrust into this highest, brightest platform, and to try to live your life and kind of go along with what you’d always done. So for example, when Bill asked me to lead our efforts on universal healthcare, it seemed pretty standard to me because I had done similar things in Arkansas on education. And so little did I know that it would create the most extraordinary backlash that’s the First Lady would be involved in trying to make sure everybody has quality, affordable health care in our country.”