Kerry Washington was 14 years old in the fall of 1991 when Anita Hill, a little-known law professor at the University of Oklahoma, was thrust into the national spotlight. Hill shocked the nation, telling a US Senate committee an unseemly tale of sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas, who had been nominated for the US Supreme Court.
Young Washington was also shocked — by her parents’ reactions. When she returned home from school to her apartment in the Soundview section of The Bronx, she heard her parents discussing the hearings, which had been on national television.
“My parents were usually on the same page around issues of political or social ideology. And this was one of the times they were not on the same page,” says Washington, who is starring as Hill in “Confirmation,” an HBO film about that moment in history, which premieres Saturday.
“I remember my dad feeling really sympathetic toward Thomas, because he understood the difficulty of his position as an African-American man having his career ripped from him,” the “Scandal” star tells The Post during an interview at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. “And he could see the layers of racism that could be involved. And through my dad’s eyes, I could, too. And through my mother’s eyes, I was really aware of the gender politics involved.”
That defining moment of what she calls her “political identity” evolved, decades later, into a filmmaker’s mission when Washington saw “Anita,” a documentary by Freida Lee Mock, at the 2013 Sundance Festival. The actress wanted to know more about both Hill’s story and that of the men in the Senate who supported and maligned her. “I started investigating the idea of making a feature,” says Washington, who is also an executive producer of “Confirmation.”
Initially, it looked like smooth sailing for Thomas, then a federal circuit-court judge who was nominated to the high court by President George H.W. Bush. In one of the many archival clips seen in the film, then-“Meet the Press” host Tim Russert said, “I don’t see any fireworks.”
Hill had worked for Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington. An aide to Sen. Edward Kennedy had heard talk about Thomas mistreating women at work, and contacted Hill, who provided information behind the scenes. As Washington’s Hill puts it in the movie, “Lots of people will fight this nomination. It doesn’t have to be me.”
In her lurid testimony, Hill detailed under oath Thomas’ repeated sexual advances and his discussions about bestiality. She said he also asked her at one point, “Who put a pubic hair on my Coke?”
“The language used in the hearings was so beyond anything that was being used culturally,” says Washington. “We had to remind ourselves as actors that it would be more difficult [to say in 1991] than it would be today. To say those words in front of your parents, to say them on national TV. Things that make you so uncomfortable in the first place.”
Thomas supporters on the committee ripped into Hill, with Thomas’ mentor Sen. John Danforth (a ferocious Bill Irwin) imagining Hill to be some trashy dame with a score to settle.
Wendell Pierce (“The Wire,” “Treme”) plays Thomas, who refused to back down in light of Hill’s testimony, accusing the liberal members of the Senate Judiciary Committee of a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who deign to think for themselves.”
“It’s the journey of a man at the pinnacle of his career about to lose it all because of something in his past,” says Pierce.
“He had to sit back and reflect. Where is this coming from, and why? So that gave me the key on how to play the part.”
Washington and Pierce have worked together several times, most notably on the Oscar-winning film “Ray.” She played Ray Charles’ long-suffering wife, Della Bea; he played Wilbur Brassfield, one of the singer’s first managers. “We were in New Orleans at the same time,” Washington says. “He was reminding my mother at the premiere of ‘Confirmation’ that we all went to a basketball game together.”
Simply playing Anita Hill is an act of imagination and passion for Washington. But the actress is not sure she would be able to muster the strength that Hill did, if faced with a similar situation.
“As a legal scholar, she really believed in the sanctity of the court and felt it was her responsibility to have that information out there. I don’t know if I would be able to do what she did. For the Supreme Court — or the head of a studio.”
Thomas was narrowly confirmed by the Senate, 52 to 48, and is still an associate justice. Hill is now a professor of social policy, law and women’s studies at Brandeis University. And Washington is using her clout as one of TV’s premiere African-American actresses to bring stories like Hill’s to the screen and remind people of the importance of the individual voice.
“Our country works only when we participate,” Washington says. “Not just when we show up at the polls, but when the phones are ringing off the hook. That’s the American people saying, ‘Do your job. Listen to me.’”