HIllary Clinton Makes Surprise Appearance at Cinema Society’s “Lilly” Premiere

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We’ve been to quite a few Cinema Society screenings over the years, but last night’s screening of Lilly at NeueHouse was one to remember. Hillary Clinton was the special guest at the new film based on the life of Lilly Ledbetter, whose fight against pay discrimination in an Alabama tire factory took her all the way to the Supreme Court. The intimate premiere was hosted by The Cinema Society and Christine Schwarzman with the ultimate NYC crowd in attendance, but all eyes were on the former First Lady.

“Thanks to everyone who has brought this extraordinary story to the screen,” Clinton said as she introduced the film. “It has been a journey of love and labor to make this film.. You’ll see in this film a woman who had worked for two decades or so in a tire factory in Alabama doing the same job as the men, with the same responsibilities, and not knowing for all those years she was not being paid the same. By accident, she discovered she was not being paid the same and she raised that with her employer, and was basically told with a shrug that’s just the way it is. I think a lot of people, particularly women in that situation, who when [they[ learned something like that would feel they just couldn’t fight back against this huge company and everyone in it. But she did fight back. She filed an equal pay act and then she brought her story to people in elected office—and I was one of them. When I was in the Senate, I had the great privilege of getting to know Lilly Ledbetter. Hearing her story and seeing a woman of such integrity and strength trying to make sure what happened to her didn’t happen to anyone else. We introduced legislation, we named it for her, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and it was the very first law that President Obama signed when he came into office.”

The film’s stars Patricia Clarkson, John Benjamin Hickey, Thomas Sadoski, and Will Pullen were on-hand, as well as director Rachel Feldman, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Gayle King, Jim Parsons, Andy Cohen, John Slattery and Talia Balsam, Victor Garber and Rainer Andreesen, Cherry Jones, Tony Shalhoub, Katie Couric and John Molner, Dan Abrams, Dominic Fumusa and Ilana Levine, Joseph Cross, Zach Booth, Cynthia Rowley, Scott Wittman, Molly Jong-Fast, Hunter Kohl, Eddie Roche, Susanne Craig, Steve Schwarzman, Ashley McDermott, Caryn Zucker, Daniel Benedict, and Cinema Society Founder Andrew Saffir. The evening also included a reunion of King and her fellow astronaut Kerianne Flynn, who were part of the recent Blue Origin all-female space flight. What a crowd!

Lilly opens in theaters on Friday!

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Eddie Roche is the Chief Content Officer of The Daily Front Row/Daily Summer/Daily Hollywood @eddie2275 on Instagram