Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes speak to The Hollywood Reporter about spotlighting the Janes — the underground network operating when abortion was illegal in the '60s and early '70s — and how they were spurred on by political developments around the hot-button issue while making their HBO film.
Pildes, who happens to also be Arcana’s sister, and Lessin began collaborating on the film after Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Lessin explains that Kavanaugh being considered for the Court, along with Trump’s other appointees Neal Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, “all pointed to the fact that Roe was not long for this world.”
“We were soon, in this country, going to be facing conditions very much like what the Janes faced in the ’60s and early ’70s,” she said. And that political atmosphere made the “intrinsically dramatic” story of “ordinary women turned outlaws” timely. “They were risking arrest and a lifetime in prison at a time when abortion was illegal, and it seemed to really speak to the moment.”
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