The powerful true story of equal pay activist Lilly Ledbetter hit close to home for director Rachel Feldman. In an industry that has long struggled with gender parity, Feldman entered Hollywood when just one percent of TV and film projects were being directed by women. Known for her work on series such as Blue Bloods, The Rookie, and The Baxters, the veteran director brings decades of experience—and advocacy—to a feature debut rooted in resilience.
A decade in the making, Feldman’s Lilly is not just a biopic; it’s a statement. “When I tell people about Lilly’s story,” says Feldman, “they assume it took place in the 1950s. But women still struggle with fair pay, discrimination, and exclusion in every sector.” Despite momentum, Feldman noted that only eight percent of the top feature films in 2024 were directed by women. As an activist for women in Hollywood, Feldman has spent her career challenging the system from within. When she initially heard Ledbetter speak, she felt a kinship that inspired her to tell the bipartisan story and honor Ledbetter’s legacy.
In the tradition of Norma Rae, Silkwood, and Erin Brockovich, Lilly demonstrates how one voice can make a difference. When Ledbetter learned after nearly two decades on the job that she was being paid significantly less than her male colleagues, her pursuit of justice against wage discrimination carried her from the factory floor to the U.S. Supreme Court and ultimately to the White House. Starring Patricia Clarkson in a commanding performance, Lilly premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival and won Best of the Fest at the 2025 Palm Springs International Film Festival.
As Lilly launches a nationwide theatrical release from Blue Harbor Entertainment on May 9th, Boxoffice Pro sat down with writer/director/producer Rachel Feldman to discuss why Ledbetter matters now more than ever and how her own journey as a woman in Hollywood led her to chronicle Ledbetter’s fight for fairness on the big screen.
In the pursuit of what Lilly accomplished, persistence was key. That’s also mirrored in bringing this story to theaters. How did you turn your passion project into a nationwide theatrical release?
When I first met Lilly and I optioned her rights, she said to me, “This is going to take a long time.” She knew nothing about the film industry. I said, “How do you know?” She said, “Because it took me a long time, and it takes a long time for anything hard to be accomplished.” She was very sure of herself, and she was right.
Through the 10 years that she journeyed, with all the ups and downs, heartbreaks, and euphoria that she experienced, we had similar parallel ups and downs with the making of the film. I’m very sad that Lilly herself is not here to see this moment as we approach release in theaters on May 9th—just ahead of Mother’s Day—but she did see the finished film, and it was very important to her. She was so grateful that her legacy would carry on in the form of entertainment, which she organically understood was the way to touch people’s hearts and minds.
Working with Lilly Ledbetter on this project, you formed a collaboration and friendship. The film stands as a testament to her legacy and what she really wanted to be remembered for, which was making a difference. Have you been able to reflect on that relationship now that you’re coming up to your theatrical release and preparing to share the story with audiences?
Working with Lilly was a joy. I was so enchanted with her elegance, her grace, and her politeness. Even though she’s a tough cookie, she was always beautifully coiffed and dressed, always a great listener, and very kind in response. I always had her ear when I wanted to talk to her about anecdotes and dig deeper into stories. Not only did I have the life rights to her story, but I also had the life rights to this beautiful book, Grace and Grit, and I also had access to Lanier Scott Isom, who wrote the memoir with her. While she didn’t really know much about the form of filmmaking, she was very intuitive and really enjoyed the process very much.
Almost every email or text I ever received from her ended with, “I have faith. I have faith in you. I have faith.” During those dark moments, when you’re at the bottom of one of those experiential valleys, to have the person who you admire most in the world say she believes in you was incredible fuel. When I first got the rights to her life and her book, there were a lot of people chasing the story who were much more powerful and had a lot more money than I did, but we just connected personally from the very beginning. I also had a wonderful connection with her attorney, John Goldfarb, who she made all of her decisions with. Though John is a well-known civil rights attorney, he also went to film school and loved making movies. All those other people who were chasing the rights were studio executives and bigger producers, but no one else was a filmmaker. I think that was the thing that they liked.
It was very meaningful to me to have a close, intimate friendship with Lilly. We really became dear, dear friends. She was supposed to have come to our world premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival, but she fell ill and was in the ICU. Her daughter Vicky came with her husband and one of her sons and was able to enjoy this incredible audience. We’ve had great audiences at film festivals, full of laughing, crying, cheering, and standing ovations. Vicky made it home in time to tell Lilly about the success of the film at the festival, and then she passed a few hours later. It was so important to her.
Patricia Clarkson steps into Lilly’s shoes. What was your collaborative process like during the shoot?
Our first conversation was so extensive and so deep. In many ways, we never really had to revisit that territory again as we got closer to the actual work. Patty comes from a political family. Her mother, Jackie Clarkson, was a prominent stateswoman in New Orleans who recently passed away. Patty is one of five daughters who were raised by this prominent woman in local politics, so they were very familiar with the name Lilly Ledbetter. Patty said that when she told her mother that she was going to play Lilly, her mother cried. She was so proud to know that Patty was going to be playing this kind of a role.
Working with her was a pleasure. We walked and talked through the script many, many times. I’ve worked with a lot of beautiful actors through the course of my career. Part of the job of the director is to know how much, or how little—and in what way—your actors want to be communicated with. We didn’t want her to cry in every scene; we didn’t want her to get angry in every scene. So we had to very carefully modulate all of that. I created what I called the emotional road map. Whether she used it on a daily basis, I don’t know, but I certainly always had it in my back pocket. In terms of bringing a character to life in flesh and blood, I couldn’t have asked for a more extraordinary experience and a more extraordinary actor.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an informal narrator in the story. How did you make the creative choice to include the interview portions?
This is really a testament to collaboration. There was no archival footage in my original screenplay. I was working with a wonderful editor, Joan Sobel, and she said, “I have an idea about putting in some more archival footage of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” I was very against it. I did not like the idea. It goes against everything that I thought I believed. When you work with great heads of departments, part of your job is to let the geniuses do a little genius. She had a wonderful assistant, and they were working with great archivists. They found these pieces of footage where Ruth Bader Ginsburg is commenting directly on what we had just had a scene about. It was undeniable to me how powerful it was for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of all the people in the world, to be proving the point. I really want to thank all of my beautiful collaborators. It was Joan’s idea to do that.
What about in terms of color and desaturating Lilly’s backstory?
Like any other project, the script had to get whittled down over time because the budget couldn’t support the original screenplay that I had written. When we tested it with a couple of screenings with friends and family, people were confused about timelines. It was really my producer, Allyn Stewart, who had another brilliant idea. She said, “Why don’t we manipulate the color a bit to help the audience along?” Again, initially I thought, ‘It’s such a cliche.’ We had a wonderful colorist and woman, Allie Ames, who played with the color, and it was so effective. If you’re not paying attention to the color shift, you’ll miss it. It happens in the shot of Birmingham, where you see all that red brick come to life. I think it’s a little bit of a Wizard of Oz moment, because it’s that turning point of her making the decision that she’s not going to take it anymore.
Have you had a memorable moment at the movie theater that shaped you or specific stories that really resonated with you?
My mother grew up during the golden age of cinema, and she was very knowledgeable about movies. We would never have called her a cinephile in those days, but she knew the names of the directors and the cinematographers and the costume designers. When I was growing up, there was really no way to see older movies other than in the middle of the night. The local TV stations used inexpensive programming [blocks] to show great films in the middle of the night. My mother would wake me up when there was a great movie on.
I remember seeing How Green Was My Valley and being so affected. It’s about coal mining in Wales and about union workers. I was so touched—not that I was conscious of it at the time—by a story that told a social issue and how that social issue affected a family. I remember other movies that we saw, things like The Boy with Green Hair or Pinky. They affected me so greatly. Even as a kid, my mother would say, “What was the movie about? What do you learn? What were the themes?” I was sort of trained to think about how movies affect you, even movies that appear to be complete entertainments.
Then, of course, in my own generation, with Norma Rae, Erin Brockovich, Silkwood, and North Country—these kinds of movies really resonate for me. It was a pleasure for me to be able to rekindle that kind of early childhood memory in making this movie. The movie is opening just ahead of Mother’s Day, and Lilly was a very proud mother and grandmother. It’s in honor of Lilly and my own mother. All of us who worked on this film would talk about our mothers. It was undeniable; you couldn’t help it. Lilly is a mother and a grandmother to all of us. I hope that families will go see the film together and appreciate the value of how hard it is for women who work and want to change the world for a better place while also being mothers, wives, and grandmothers.
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