"Gaslit" Recalls Martha Mitchell's Role in the Watergate Scandal
If you are a fan of Impeachment: American Crime Story and The Post, you will not want to miss Gaslit. The eight-part series—which airs every Sunday on Starz in the U.S. and Starzplay in the U.K.—brings to life the Watergate scandal that plagued Richard Nixon's presidency in the early 1970s and led to his resignation.
The new series is inspired by the first season of Slate's Slow Burn podcast and explores untold stories from inside Nixon's White House during the Watergate era, with a particular focus on American socialite Martha Mitchell, who is portrayed by Julia Roberts.
So who was Martha Mitchell, and how was she involved in Watergate? Newsweek has everything you need to know.
Martha Mitchell was an American socialite and the wife of President Richard Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, who also happened to be one of Nixon's closest friends.
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Martha Mitchell had earned the reputation of being a gossip and an outspoken socialite with the nickname "Martha the Mouth." As heard in the Slow Burn podcast, Martha Mitchell would phone the press with political gossip after going through her husband's papers.
Today, the term 'Watergate' generally refers to the major political scandal involving Nixon's administration from 1972 to 1974, which stemmed from the cover-up of its involvement in the June 1972 break-in and bug at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate complex.
Martha Mitchell was the first person to go public about Nixon's government's involvement in the Watergate scandal. As John Mitchell's wife, she was one of the most famous whistleblowers of the Nixon presidency. In an interview with the British journalist David Frost in 1977, Nixon himself would go on to state: "If it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell, there'd have been no Watergate."
For weeks prior to Watergate, Martha Mitchell had been complaining to reporters and anybody who would listen to her about the Republicans carrying out "dirty tricks" against the Democrats after overhearing her husband's conversations.