Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Nephew Talks ‘On The Basis Of Sex,’ And Why His Aunt Isn’t A ‘Superhero’

In case you somehow missed “On the Basis of Sex,” the must-see biopic that serves as the origin story for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a woman whose life’s work has catapulted her into the realm of feminist demigod, we’ve got just what you need. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Daniel Stiepleman, who is not only the brilliant screenwriter for this film, but also Justice Ginsburg’s nephew.

“I am Ruth’s nephew, not her spokesperson,” Stiepleman cautioned before our interview began. I shared with him that I’d invited Justice Ginsburg to my wedding in 2014, and he countered with humor, “She officiated my wedding before it was the cool thing to do.” Here is a (lightly edited and condensed) write-up of our conversation.

Staci Zaretsky (SZ): Given the current state of affairs in our country, and given what the President himself has said about your aunt, do you think of this as a political film?

Daniel Stiepleman (DS): What’s kind of been a fascinating part of this journey for me, lest we forget, is that this has been an eight-year journey for me. I’d say to people, “I’m writing this film, and it’s about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” Well, the problem is no one knew who Ruth Bader Ginsburg was, because it was 2011, pre-Notorious RBG, pre-everything. So I thought I was writing the movie that was going to introduce Ruth to the mainstream. And then, history and the internet took care of that for me.

And so all of sudden, the context of the movie changed and what it was about kind of changed around me as I was writing, and now here we are today looking at it in 2019. So for me, the walkaway of the film is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed the world, but she changed the world by convincing people to agree with her, not by trying to destroy the people who disagree with her — and whether that’s a commentary on our culture or our politics or probably both, I leave to smarter people than I am. But that’s the thing that inspires me about this film: it’s a reminder that it is possible to get back to that, because if we don’t, where are we headed?

SZ: Your aunt has developed a huge fan base over the years, and she’s being revered as some kind of a superhero. Did you ever think something like that would happen?

DS: One of the things I hope the film does is it turns her back into a person. I think in some ways that she’s earned the reverence, but when we treat her like a superhero, a superhero has super powers, and if she’s a superhero, then it means the rest of us can’t do what she’s done.

One of the things about Ruth is that when push comes to shove, she’s just a nice woman who’s super smart and works incredibly hard, and we can all be super smart and work incredibly hard. Probably most of us need more sleep than she does — if there is an aspect of her that’s superhero-like, it’s how well she can do on very little sleep. So for me, that was one of the goals of the film, to make her human again.

One of the things that’s been interesting to me is that for a lot of the audience, seeing her as a real person overcoming real challenges that feel relatable is incredibly empowering. There are a lot of people who need her to be a superhero, and also a lot of people who need her to be… lest we forget, a villain. So for a small percentage of the audience, seeing her as a real person puts them on edge. It’s like they need her to be something larger than life — but I can’t write the hero and I can’t write the villain, all I can write is Aunt Ruth.

SZ: How has she been handling her pop-culture fame?

DS: The same way she handles everything, with aplomb.

SZ: It’s been well documented that there were many complaints about how “unrealistic” your aunt’s relationship was with her husband. Do you think it’s possible for two lawyers to have a similar relationship today?

DS: I tell you from experience as a working writer married to an oncologist with two little kids at home that the bar for being considered a good father is incredibly low. And it is easy to live up only to that bar and have everyone praise you for cooking a meal on occasion or changing a diaper, and to feel like you’re doing your job well and call it quits. And one of the great benefits of my life, and my wife’s life, and I’d like to say my childrens’ life, is that we had a Martin Ginsburg in our lives as a role model, and a Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a role model — a Marty and Ruth for what a marriage can look like and what a really equal marriage can look like.

And that was the principal motivation for writing the movie: I realized they were role models that I could share with other people. So I think it’s possible. It takes two people who are as committed to each other’s success and happiness as they are to their own and two people who don’t view their spouse as competition.

SZ: What kind of legal gymnastics did you have to go through to get your aunt a cameo at the end of the movie?

DS: That was all Mimi Leder. The way I had written it was young Ruth walking up the steps to go hear Alan Derr argue Reed v. Reed, and Mimi called me and said, “I have this idea. Do you think your aunt would be interested?” And I felt confident that she would be, assuming she was allowed to. And I said to Mimi, “But if you shoot it, you better put it in the movie because I don’t want to be the one who has to call and tell her she’s been cut out of her own life story.”

And so Mimi wrote a lovely letter to Ruth asking her to appear at the end of the film, and Ruth, I believe — it wasn’t really gymnastics, the Court itself has legal counsel — she sent the request on to them and it was approved with some caveats… like I think we couldn’t put her appearance in the advertising, something like that.

SZ: You once said you channeled your aunt’s comments in the margins of briefs as your inspiration for the film. I know our readers would love to get inside of your aunt’s mind. Do you happen to remember what your favorite comment was?

DS: My favorite comment was a line in the script that never made it into the final movie. Now that I’m talking to someone from Above the Law, I have to get the citation right, and I’m not sure that I will. I think it was Justice Bradley who wrote that it was “the law of the creator that women had to fulfill the role of wife and mother,” something to that end. And Ruth had written in the margins, “And how did this creator communicate this to you, Justice Bradley?” [Ed. note: The actual quotation came from Justice Joseph Bradley in Bradwell v. Illinois, one of the earliest known challenges to discrimination on the basis of sex, where he wrote the following in a concurrence: “The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.”]

SZ: What do you think people need to know about “On the Basis of Sex” that really hasn’t been said yet?

DS: One of the things that I’m so proud of is that the film works the way Ruth worked. Which is to say, Ruth, we want to think of her as a “tear down the system” rebel because it’s a romantic notion, but as much as she worked hand in hand, philosophically, with women like Gloria Steinem, she had a very different approach. She stood in front of a judge and she presented herself as, for lack of a better word, non-threatening, almost conservative. She dressed conservatively, she spoke in a polished way that sort of covered up her Brooklynese and her Jewish accent, and she presented herself in as non-threatening and as reasonable a way as possible.

And so one of the things we sort of painstakingly did with the film was to make something that felt approachable to people who don’t already agree with her, and for what she stands for, because that’s how she was able to sell a really revolutionary idea at the time — that men and women should be equal under the law. And in the same way, we took a film that feels very approachable and mainstream but then does something that we almost never see in a Hollywood film that is a period drama: a female lead where the husband wears an apron and the teenage daughter never talks about boys or clothes and they make full-throated, intellectual, reasonable arguments for treating each other well.

*****

On behalf of everyone here at Above the Law, I want to thank Daniel Stiepleman for sharing his insights with our audience. “On the Basis of Sex” is available for streaming now, and will be released on Blu-ray on April 9.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.