OAKLAND >> When Jennifer Siebel Newsom was a young actress getting started in Hollywood, she found herself typecast in role after role as a trophy wife.
Now she’s the real-life spouse of governor candidate Gavin Newsom. But this independent filmmaker, who’s dedicated her career to breaking down gender stereotypes, is hoping to play a very different role as California’s first lady — and that could start with the title.
“What if I was called — if Gavin was fortunate to be elected governor — ‘first partner?’” Siebel Newsom suggested in a recent interview. That title would help “women to be seen as more than a stereotypical lady,” she argued, and also work for spouses of future governors who aren’t straight men.
Gender roles are “straitjackets,” she said. “You lose something in the process of performing masculinity, or performing femininity — which is being a ‘lady.’”
It’s a theme the former actress has focused on in documentaries such as “Miss Representation,” which weaves together sexualized clips of women in popular culture and interviews with women and girls about how those depictions affect American society.
Now Siebel Newsom is turning her lens on Oakland, finishing up a new documentary about economic and social inequality — “The Great American Lie” — that follows several locals as they struggle to make ends meet.
DOWN TO EARTH
On the final day of shoots last week, Siebel Newsom and her four-person crew showed up at the landmark First Unitarian Church near downtown Oakland to film interviews with activists such as Tracey Bell-Borden, who was forced into debt to pay $100,000 in bail after her daughter was arrested for a low-level crime.
“You can always tell who’s authentic — and she’s very down-to-earth,” Bell-Borden said of Siebel Newsom. During their interviews over the last few months, “we were breaking down in tears together,” she said.
Afternoon sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows inside the church as Siebel Newsom’s boom mic hovered obtrusively over a group discussion about criminal justice reform. She seemed at home, greeting activists and locals with big hugs. Later, she staged the movie’s final shot: Bell-Borden literally walking into the sunset down 14th Street.
The documentary, which is scheduled to be released the same month the next governor takes office, shows how Siebel Newsom’s work dovetails with her husband’s. The lieutenant governor has singled out California’s deep-seated inequality as the top issue in his campaign, and made a commitment to eliminating cash bail. Bell-Borden’s story would fit perfectly in a Newsom campaign ad.
Siebel Newsom hopes the movie — which also follows Trump voters in Louisiana and Ohio — spurs support for her husband’s agenda.
“Film and media can not just awaken consciousness, but really shift attitudes and behavior,” she said. “To get the legislation and the policy shifts that Gavin will need, we as a state have got to have those mind shifts.”
MARIN UPBRINGING
The challenges facing the working-class residents in Siebel Newsom’s documentary are a far cry from her own upbringing. She grew up in Marin County in a wealthy, conservative Republican family, the second oldest of five sisters, one of whom died in a childhood accident. Her father was an investment manager and a board member for the environmental nonprofit Conservation International, and Siebel Newsom volunteered for the group in Botswana and Ecuador between undergraduate and MBA degrees at Stanford.
After doing some acting in college, she moved to Hollywood at age 28, landing mostly bit parts in movies and TV shows such as Mad Men and Numb3rs (and at one point dating George Clooney). But she chafed when agents told her that if she wanted to be successful, she’d have to erase her MBA from her résumé and lie about her age.
She was also harassed by film mogul Harvey Weinstein, who made “aggressive advances” toward her during a hotel room meeting about a potential role, she revealed in a Huffington Post article last year.
Those experiences of sexism in Hollywood helped inspire “Miss Representation” in 2011, which she followed four years later with “The Mask You Live In,” exploring how stereotypes of masculinity affect boys. The films grew into The Representation Project, a nonprofit she started to combat gender stereotypes.
RAISES AWARENESS
Her films have helped raise broader awareness about how deeply sexism is soaked into American popular culture, said Carol Jenkins, the founding president of the Women’s Media Center, who’s interviewed in “Miss Representation.”
“I still get people calling me and writing me who’ve seen that film and are moved by it,” Jenkins said. “I don’t think that acting was her goal in life — she’s motivated by this larger goal of exploring the issues of gender for women and for men.”
Newsom also makes an appearance in the film. Siebel Newsom barely knew anything about the then-San Francisco mayor when she met him on a blind date in 2006. But the two hit it off, and she was especially impressed when he took her on a walking tour of the City by the Bay, chatting with passersby and sharing stories about each neighborhood.
“I was blown away at how passionate he was about his work and the city — and that is really attractive to me,” she said.
The couple married in July 2008 and now have four kids, ranging in age from 2 to 8. They live in the hills of Kentfield in Marin County.
Expect Siebel Newsom, 44, to be a visible presence in Sacramento if her husband wins. She’s played a starring role in Newsom’s campaign so far, introducing him at rallies across the state and wiping away tears during an event with the father of a gun violence victim. During the “March for Our Lives” gun control demonstrations this year, Siebel Newsom spoke at a San Francisco rally — decrying “toxic masculinity” and pointing out that nearly all mass shooters are men — as Newsom addressed activists in Orange County.
FEMINIST RECORD
Her feminist record could also help her defend her husband from political attacks over his past infidelity, which surfaced as an issue during the primary campaign. Before the two met, when Newsom was separated from his first wife, current Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, he had an affair with his appointments secretary, who was married to his campaign manager and close friend.
But Siebel Newsom has gotten in trouble on the topic before. The scandal went public while she was dating Newsom, and she threw lighter fluid on the media firestorm by telling the San Francisco Chronicle that “the woman is the culprit,” and commenting on local blog SFist that “everyone near to her has stories and says she is bad news.” She later apologized.
Friends of the couple say she’s had a profound impact on Newsom, who as mayor had a reputation for being aloof.
“Jen is so open and honest, almost naïve in the sense of how trusting she is,” said Mimi Silbert, the head of San Francisco’s Delancey Street Project, who’s known Newsom for decades and helped counsel him in the years after his affair. “Gavin was struggling with having his emotions really show — and she helped him take those walls down.”
If Newsom wins in November, Siebel Newsom said she’d want to use her position as first partner to promote mental health issues, address sexual harassment in Sacramento, and organize summits bringing together young people from around California.
And she’d try to avoid cliched stereotypes of the role a first lady should perform.
“Who wants to be a trophy wife?” she asked. “I’ve already played that in Hollywood.”