Why Hollywood Still Loves Watergate: Fifty Years Later, The Scandal Inspires ‘Gaslit’ And More

deadline.com:

In Starz’s new Gaslit, premiering Sunday, central Watergate figure John Dean is played by Dan Stevens. In White House Plumbers, an upcoming HBO limited series, Dean is portrayed by Domhnall Gleeson.

And in The Last Witness: Watergate, an upcoming four-part CNN original series, Dean himself will “confront his own involvement in the biggest presidential scandal of the 20th century,” in the words of the network.As we approach the 50th anniversary of the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Watergate complex, the “third-rate burglary” that brought down a presidency, Hollywood is still mining the scandal for storylines, drawing on new perspectives and points of view even as many of the central figures have long passed, the notorious aspects of Watergate have faded in memory, and D.C.

has been gripped by so many other moments of abuse of power that are arguably of far more consequence. (Note: January 6).“Watergate is one of those stories where hubris brings nemesis,” says Tim Naftali, New York University professor and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “It makes it a source of optimism for people who felt that Donald Trump somehow escaped justice, escaped sort of a reckoning.

And so Watergate is a story of a president who abuses power, who participates in a criminal conspiracy, and then suffers for him the greatest possible loss, which is the presidency, and he resigns in disgrace as the first president ever to do so.“The story is picaresque, with weird and wonderful characters including Martha Mitchell, but it’s also a drama that played out differently from something that we all watched.