Showtime Cancels “The First Lady” After One Season

The Second Season of “The First Lady,” an anthology series on Showtime, will not be produced. The choice was made a little more than six weeks after the network aired the series’ Season 1 finale.

A Showtime representative informed Variety that the anthology series “The First Lady” will not be continuing with a second season. We would like to thank our showrunner Cathy Schulman, director Susanne Bier, their fellow executive producers, our incredible cast, led by executive producers Viola Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Gillian Anderson, as well as our studio partner Lionsgate for their hard work in narrating the distinctive stories of three remarkable leaders.

The first season of the anthology series alternated between Eleanor Roosevelt’s (Anderson), Betty Ford’s (Pfeiffer), and Michelle Obama’s (Obama) political and personal life during three separate White House administrations (Davis).

Critics had a mixed reaction to “The First Lady.” The series’ structural device didn’t sit well with Variety’s top television critic Caroline Framke, who claimed that “squeezing their stories together doesn’t just make for confusing television, but does them all a disservice in the process.” The high-profile production only received three craft nominations across all categories, showing that the Television Academy did not favour it when the Emmy nominations were announced.

The 10-episode series was written by Aaron Cooley and was produced by Lionsgate Television for Showtime. Oscar winner Schulman acted as executive producer and showrunner for Welle Entertainment. All of the episodes of the first season were executive produced and directed by Oscar and Emmy winner Bier. Executive producers included Cooley, Davis, Julius Tennon, Andrew Wang, Pavlina Hatoupis, Alyson Feltes, Jeff Gaspin, and Brad Kaplan.

The news of the cancellation of the series was originally reported by Deadline.