What if five of America’s most iconic presidents had been women?
That’s the premise behind a new short film by Tatia Pllieva called Speech, in which five actresses deliver excerpts of some of history’s most memorable speeches from Presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” actress Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World, The Help), playing Lincoln, begins the Gettysburg Address.
The film’s release comes as Hillary Clinton is poised to become the first woman to secure the Democrat Party’s presidential nomination and could become the first female president in United States history.
Howard is joined in the video by actresses Becki Newton (Ugly Betty) as Kennedy, Deborah Ann Woll (Daredevil) as LBJ, Gillian Zinser (90210) as Carter and Robinne Lee (Hitch) as Obama.
The women are dressed in suits and deliver snippets of some of the greatest speeches of the 20th Century in front of an oversized American flag.
Pllieva’s previous short films explored what happens when two strangers are asked to kiss immediately upon meeting each other, while another, released as a promotion for the Showtime series Masters of Sex, explored what happens when two strangers are asked to undress each other and get into bed together.
Watch Pllieva’s Speech in full above.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum