What The Hell America!

Directed by Rachel Feldman and starring Patricia Clarkson, Lilly brings to life the extraordinary journey of equal pay crusader Lilly Ledbetter with heart, grit and cinematic vision.

It’s tempting these dark days to dismiss the idea that any one person can make a difference.

And yet, every day ordinary people fight injustice. And some days, those people persist long enough, resist long enough, that their fights rise to national prominence. One such fight is chronicled in the new film Lilly, in theaters beginning May 9. The brainchild of director Rachel Feldman, Lilly tells the story of Lilly Ledbetter, “an ordinary woman who became extraordinary,” in the words of actor Patricia Clarkson, who portrays her in the film.

Feldman, who fought for more than a decade to get this film made, saw the equal-pay icon speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 and knew she had to tell her story. Harnessing what Feldman characterizes as Ledbetter’s “radical resilience,” Lilly is simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, intimately reflective of its subject’s fierce determination but also her quiet human ordinariness. According to Feldman, it’s a film about transformation—in which “a mature woman finds her voice through activation through an issue.”

Particularly effective is the way Clarkson embodies Ledbetter. She says she wanted to “[put] her back on the ground,” rather than raising her up on a pedestal—a down-to-earth sensibility that really comes through. You can easily imagine her as your neighbor, your grandmother, your coworker, your childhood friend. Clarkson sees her own departed mother in Ledbetter, and through her performance, she says she developed “a deep emotional connection to Lilly” that she’ll have for the rest of her life.

“This was an important moment in my life and career to get to play a great American woman,” Clarkson told Ms. Still, she asked herself, “How do I make her flesh and blood? How do I make her a whole person?”

Feldman’s aesthetics immerse us in Ledbetter’s world from the outset. While Lilly begins in brilliant color, as soon as we step back in time to encounter Ledbetter’s backstory, the saturation drains from the film. Oppressive and muted, the film’s color palette in these opening minutes can be felt just as starkly as the dampening of Lilly’s bright spirit as she struggles with injustice.

“I wanted to give a sense of being locked into something,” Feldman explains. “It’s dark. It’s dour. It’s frustrating.”

The film chronicle’s Ledbetter’s past faithfully in these first scenes: In 1979, a few months shy of her 41st birthday, she was hired as a supervisor at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in Gadsden, Ala. She and her husband, Charles, needed a second income to make ends meet and, as an avid reader of the news and business magazines, Ledbetter knew that radial tires, like those being made in the new addition to the Gadsden Goodyear plant, were “the way of the future.”

For 19 years, Ledbetter worked long days, nights and weekends at Goodyear, never imagining that the good faith she had in her employer wasn’t mutual.

One day, nearing retirement, she received an anonymous note listing her salary and the salaries of three other supervisors, all men, who were making more money than she was, despite not having the same level of education and/or seniority at the company.

In the film, this is Ledbetter’s moment of activation, one that’s tonally marked by a dynamic shift back to fully saturated color. From here, Lilly brings us along with its protagonist as she navigates the American legal system, combats corporate greed and grapples with Congress.

Ledbetter sued Goodyear in 1999, charging the company with gender-based pay discrimination, a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. With the help of attorney Jon Goldfarb and his firm, she embarked on a 10-year odyssey that would take her all the way to the Supreme Court—and beyond.

“I was really humiliated, embarrassed and disappointed that I had chosen a company who was, at the time I went to work for them, [the] number one tire manufacturer in the world, but yet they were treating me like this,” Ledbetter said in a 2021 interview with Ms. She assumed that because Goodyear had government contracts, it would have to adhere to federal guidelines, but she learned “there was no enforcement. The law is only good if it’s enforced.”

Sadly, even the Supreme Court did not see fit to enforce the law. She was denied compensation in the landmark 2007 ruling Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., based on a technicality in Title VII that restricted claims of discrimination to a 180-day period.

But she didn’t give up, buoyed in part by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s famous dissenting opinion that holding Ledbetter’s case to the time limit was disingenuous. The Court’s ruling suggested Ledbetter should have complained earlier—impossible when the company’s policy demanded employees not discuss their salaries with each other and when pay discrimination often happens slowly over time.

“The ball is in Congress’ court,” wrote Ginsburg, “to correct this Court’s parsimonious reading of Title VII.” So Ledbetter took her fight to Congress and in 2009 President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law as his first official act. The Fair Pay Act effectively reframes the 180-day statute of limitations so that the clock restarts every time a new paycheck is received.

Feldman’s film weaves together these historical milestones with moments of Ledbetter living her life with her husband and adult children.

One of the most fulfilling subplots is the subtle but profound love shared between Lilly and Charles. “I just want people to be filled with joy and happiness that this woman prevailed,” Clarkson says. “And also, at the center of this, is this beautiful love story, which is not fictional.”

Despite having the earmarks of an acclaimed Hollywood drama—a hero who demonstrates grit and perseverance through all odds, quiet tragedy and thwarted triumph, and a timeless love story—Feldman had enough trouble getting the film made by a Hollywood studio that she eventually went the indie route. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for Feldman and Ledbetter to attend financing meetings in person, they turned to Zoom to talk with anyone interested in the film—with remarkable success. “The financing aspect of this film, which you might imagine would be the most difficult, really became this incredibly pleasurable experience because people wanted to support Lilly’s story,” Feldman says.

Years before the first scenes were shot, Ledbetter herself had “a strong faith that this movie would be made. It needs to be made,” she said. “It needs to be on record, not for ‘Lilly Ledbetter’—because I did all I could.”

She hoped that when people saw the film, “somebody in every showing [would] make a change in their life, because so many people have not realized how shortchanged women and minorities have been for many, many years.”

Unfortunately, Ledbetter didn’t live to see the film arrive in theaters. She died in October 2024 at age 86. “She was so profoundly happy to know that her legacy would extend in entertainment form,” Feldman says, “particularly so that young women would absorb the story.”

While Lilly is based closely on Ledbetter’s life, Feldman employs some fictionalized moments (all approved by Ledbetter) to underscore the narrative and its dramas. The film also effectively incorporates archival footage, particularly of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, the signing of the Fair Pay Act and of Justice Ginsburg discussing the case, a choice about which Feldman wasn’t fully convinced until she saw it in action. “I’m a dramatist. I’m not a documentarian,” Feldman insists. But when her editor suggested adding some clips of Ginsburg, she was willing to try.

Tethering Lilly firmly to the real world while allowing viewers to dwell in the possibilities of its fictions proves to be a winning combination. It effectively reminds us that Ledbetter could be anyone, but she’s remarkable all the same.

“This is a movie for this moment,” Feldman contends, particularly in a time when people may feel like hope is in short supply. “It offers inspiration. It tells a story of an ordinary person who does an extraordinary thing, and it proves that one person truly can make a difference.”

The list of theaters and cities where Lilly will play is growing; find how to watch here.