It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen Julia Roberts’ famous, stunning smile on our screens, but that’s all about to change, with the trailer for her new series, Gaslit, dropping this week.
WATCH: Gaslit | Official Teaser
We last saw Julia on Homecoming, a 2018-2020 psychological thriller television series based on the podcast of the same name.
Just like Homecoming, Julia will be working as an executive producer for Gaslit, but unlike the 2018 series, she has undergone a major transformation to star as Martha Mitchell, the Arkansan socialite who was also the wife to John N Mitchell, the US Attorney General during the presidency of Richard Nixon.
The first trailer shows Julia looking incredibly refined, her hair pulled back into beehives, or styled into fancy feathered looks to replicate the appearance of a woman from America’s southern states in the early 1970s.
While Julia is similar in age to the Martha she is portraying, she is also visually aged to match the character, partially by the costuming done on the show.
Julia can be seen wearing colourful coats and dresses, all with high necks and wide, statement collars.
We’ve also spotted patterned blazer and skirt-suit numbers, as well as big earrings and the occasional brooch – things we’re certain Julia herself wouldn’t be caught wearing.
Gaslit tells the story of Martha’s involvement as an unlikely whistleblower in the Watergate scandal in June of 1972.
While a complex piece of American political history, the long and short of the Watergate scandal involved burglars – all connected to the Republican Party – breaking into the offices of the Democratic Party at the Watergate complex in order to install recording devices in order to thwart their chances at the 1972 election.
One of these burglars was James W. McCord Jr, who was the security chief of the Committee to Re-elect the President, which was presided over by Martha’s husband, Attorney General John Mitchell.
Due to Martha’s reputation for speaking to reporters, John attempted to keep her in the dark about the scandal at the time of its occurrence, but after reading a newspaper that identified McCord Jr as one of the burglars arrested, her suspicions were raised.
She made a famous phone call to political reporter Helen Thomas, where Martha said she was leaving her husband until he resigned from the Committee to Re-elect the President.
The phone call came to an abrupt end, with it later coming to light that a colleague of her husband’s had pulled the phone cord from the wall, which was followed by Martha being accosted by five men in an incident that left her bruised and in need of stitches.
Following this, she was injected with a tranquilizer, and was, in the words of McCord “basically kidnapped” for her attempt to speak to reporters.
While delving into the Watergate scandal, Gaslit will be based on a podcast series called Slow Burn, which told Martha’s story.
The show will also star Sean Penn as John Mitchell, as well as British actor Dan Stevens, Betty Gilpin, and Shea Wigham.
Gaslit will premiere on Stan on April 24, 2022.
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