Melissa Benoist needs a drink. It’s November 8, 2016. She’s filming Super Girl in Vancouver and news just broke that Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election. “We were on a bar set and I really wanted a drink,” she tells StyleCaster, “but I couldn’t because it was a fake set.” She laughs about it now, but at the time, the mood was incredibly somber. “I cried,” she recalls, explaining that she’s been a registered Democrat since she was old enough to vote.
It’s a moment in time Benoist had to revisit for The Girls on The Bus, a fictionalized MAX comedy-drama series inspired by reporter Amy Chozick’s memoir Chasing Hillary, which documents her time on the candidate’s campaign trail. Benoist, who is also a producer on the show, plays Sadie McCarthy. She’s an optimist, a “lovable mess,” and a “journalist with a capital J” who uproots her life to cover the race to the Whitehouse.
But the show isn’t about politics, not really. It’s about life on the campaign trail and the unlikely bond between four women competitors: the veteran “gotcha” reporter Grace (Carla Gugino); the conservative cable news anchor Kimberlyn (Christina Elmore); the “new media” TikTok influencer Lola (Natasha Behnam); and Sadie, who’s desperate to prove she can still be objective.
Actors and journalists have more in common than you might think. Journalists identify so much with their profession that even when they leave the field (of their own volition or not) they still identify as journalists. Conversely, how many times have you heard an actor say their work is a calling?
“I think a lot of people maybe romanticize acting in that they see the glitz and the glamour; people might romanticize journalism in the same way in the way,” observes Benoist. “But I for sure didn’t know about how mundane campaign reporting is sometimes… DC and Hollywood, they’re both like a one-industry town and everyone is in this bubble together. We’re all eating the same crappy breakfast. You know what I mean?” StyleCaster chatted to the actor about The Girls on the Bus and how she put herself in Sadie McCarthy’s shoes.
How do you relate to Sadie and in what ways are you different?
I identify with her optimism. Sometimes I can be cynical—I think it’s hard not to succumb to cynicism, especially in this day and age—but I think I follow her hope. I am very passionate about what I do and I take it very seriously when I find something that I really care about or a story that I really want to tell.
In the ways that we’re different, I am not as much of a compartmentalizer. Throughout the show, there’s a lot of growth for her. But I’m someone who really likes to feel my feelings, lets them out, and really wants to deal with them to grow. Sadie kind of squashes it all down.
What sort of preparation or research did you do for the role?
I read anything and everything that I could get my hands on, especially the books that Amy Chozick told me to read. Her book was undeniably helpful, of course. But this book called What It Takes by Richard Ben Kramer was really helpful, and also just fascinating.
I read The Boys on The Bus by Timothy Kraus, and Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ‘72, which was amazing. Hunter S. Thompson’s prose is unique but pretty dated. But my favorite thing that I read was an essay called Up Simba! by David Foster Wallace. I was already a fan of his and it’s about the 2000 election. Lots of documentaries, too. I like to think of myself as an informed person in the way I digest my news, but I realized that I would love learning about journalism and what it means to be a journalist.
I love how Hunter S. Thompson is Sadie’s… would we say conscience? What were those scenes like to film?
Those scenes were the most fun because PJ [Sosko] who plays Hunter S Thompson was just down and game and had inhabited the skin of Hunter S. Thompson. No one’s played that role since Johnny Depp and for PJ, there were no rules because he’s a figment of her imagination. Should we be concerned about her? Maybe [laughs]. It was always like, so what can we do this time? What’s something funny that he could do? And then he has moments of sheer poignancy that are so laden with meaning for Sadie.
The word objectivity comes up a lot in this show. Do you think humans are capable of being objective?
That’s a really good question. I know that I am not. I would not be able to do that. If I’m honest, I think I’d move towards a subjective or a more Gonzo-style approach because there is so much in our faces that we have to have an opinion on… I know that I wouldn’t, is my answer.
I found this quote from Thompson about reporting on Richard Nixon. “You had to get the subjective to see Nixon clearly. And the shock of recognition was often painful.”
I know exactly the quote because I have it written down in my Sadie McCarthy notebook. [holds up notebook].
What else have you got in there?
Lots of Hunter S. Thompson stuff. Notes from everything that I read, really, and then thoughts that I had. He has a whole passage about cynicism, I think, regarding Nixon.
I want to finish with some questions about your other work. Has there been any talk of a Supergirl reunion?
I think it’s so fresh [the finale aired in 2021] that it’s not anything I’d be opposed to. All of those people are my family. We have a shared bond, but I haven’t heard anything about a reunion.
There were two musical episodes in the Arrow universe. One in The Flash and the other in Supergirl. Yourself, Grant Gustin [The Flash] and Darren Criss [Music Meister] from those shows were also in Glee. Do you guys keep in touch?
That’s another shared experience that I think all of us are going to carry forever because we were so young. It’s funny because Glee and Supergirl were both very challenging jobs. So, I think that bonded us. I talked to Grant Gustin all the time. Actually, he and my husband went to college together, so he was already a friend. I see him and talk to him all the time.
If you were on Glee today, what song would you want to sing?
There was actually a song that I think I was supposed to sing while I was on the show but because of copyright, they couldn’t get it. It was “Superwoman” by Alicia Keys. I always wanted to sing that.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Girls on the Bus debuts with two episodes on MAX on March 14, 2024, followed by one new episode weekly through May 9.
