Lilly Is Me, Lilly Is You

By Katlean de Monchy–

Every summer, we think the season ends with a bang at the Hampton Classic. But this year, Paola Bacchini Rosenshein decided there was one more conversation worth having—and it had nothing to do with horses.

The audience (Photo credit: Rob Rich/Society Allure)

Instead, she brought people together at Southampton Arts Center for a sold-out screening of “Lilly,” the powerful 2024 film about Lilly Ledbetter, the Alabama factory worker who discovered, after nearly 20 years on the job, that she had been paid roughly half of what her male counterparts were earning.

By the end of the evening, I think many of us had the realization that we are all Lillys.

Lilly begins as an ordinary woman with an extraordinary determination to give her children a better future. She wants what so many women of her generation wanted—to work hard, contribute to her family and create a more secure life for her children.

Patricia Clarkson playing Lilly Ledbetter (Photo still courtesy of Blue Harbor Entertainment)

But before Lilly could take on the factory, the legal system or eventually Congress, she had to confront expectations closer to home. Her husband believed that he should be the provider. Lilly’s desire to work and build something of her own challenged that.

At the age of 41 she got the job of overnight superviser at a Goodyear Tire factory in Georgia, working 12 hour shifts.

And then came the discovery that changed everything. After she had been on the job for 20 years, and praised for her performance, a note informed her that two male co-workers were being paid significantly more a month for the same job.

What began as a deeply personal injustice became a fight that reached the Supreme Court (she won millions) and then was overturned on appeal (she lost the millions). Ultimately she took her cause to Congress, so we all won. If her name rings a distant bell it may be because President Barack Obama’s first act when he took office was to sign into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

But “Lilly” isn’t a story about a famous activist who set out to change the world. It is about a woman who simply knew that something was wrong—and wasn’t willing to walk away from it.

Patricia Clarkson at the Southampton Arts Center (Photo Credit: Rob Rich/ Socity Allure)

Academy Award nominee Patricia Clarkson, who portrays Lilly, was at the Southampton Arts Center and brought the house down. Clarkson works mostly in smaller, independent films, having her breakout role in “The Station Agent” opposite Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister) in his breakout role. Others may have seen her on television playing Amy Adams’s mother in “Sharp Objects.”

Writer-director Rachel Feldman joined by Zoom, while executive producer Wendy Federman sat with Clarkson for a conversation moderated by Cheri Kaufman, entrepreneur, philanthropist, producer and Hamptons resident. In the audience: fashion pioneer Fern Mallis; Ken and Maria Fishel, Sylvia Hemingway, Pamela Morgan, Lauren Roberts, Elizabeth Steinberg, Christina Strassfield, the Southampton Arts Center’s executive director, and the Arts Center chair, Simone Levinson, along with her sister, former actress and activist Felice Schachter.

Simone Levinson of the Southampton Arts Center and Lauren Day Roberts (Photo Credit: Rob Rich/ Society Allure)

Simone Levinson recalled Gloria Steinem’s commencement address at her Tufts graduation and the advice has stayed with her.

“If you want to do something, do it now.”