Barbara did the selecting and that's probably the most brilliant thing was she put together a group of women, different backgrounds, different experiences.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Well, she managed to - Barbara was capable of doing practically anything if she set her mind to it. In retrospect, I'm not surprised that Barbara managed to get collect calls through.
The Seventies seemed like this really open time. There were a lot of strong women characters deciding what kind of artists they wanted to be.
I think people tuned in a lot to see Barbara when she first came here and they just didn't like the show they saw. I think it was dull. It was sterile.
Also, it was a cultural moment that wasn't being represented in terms of women who were successful and had choices they didn't have before. They needed a show that they can watch that they felt like represented them.
It's a huge change from when I started in the 1960s, but what is really impressive is that the number of ladies on set, the women working on set is a huge percentage. There used to be no women. It was just the leading lady's mother, perhaps the hairdresser and the makeup person.
Growing up with Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek - people who were always trying to do something else - I wanted to follow in their footsteps. They gave people a different perspective of how women were supposed to look like and be.
The role of Barbara, in Music for Millions, was literally a tonic for me.
In our 20s, women in my generation, we all wanted to be Laurie Anderson.
Almost all first ladies have had tremendous power on personnel issues, whether the public realized it or not, whether it was Barbara Bush or Nancy Reagan or whoever.
If anyone was going to write the definitive account of what the 2008 election meant for women, it would be Rebecca Traister.