‘She Wields Her Power With Kind of a Wink,’ Says Uma Thurman, Who Plays Arianna Huffington in SUPER PUMPED: THE BATTLE FOR UBER

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Uma Thurman knew that playing Arianna Huffington in SHOWTIME’s SUPER PUMPED: THE BATTLE FOR UBER would be a balancing act between the person and the persona. Huffington is a well-known businesswoman, author, TV personality, and co-founder of The Huffington Post. Thurman’s portrayal begins in Episode 4 of SUPER PUMPED, on Sunday, March 20, only on Crave, when the Huffington character first encounters Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Huffington encourages Kalanick’s tendency to publicly crow about his success, and he boldly tells her, “You are good, I am seeing it all, I love it.” She puts him slightly back on his heels by responding, “If you think you see it all, give it another think.” But their friendship develops into something very important from a business standpoint. In a virtual roundtable interview, Thurman said that she has encountered Huffington a number of times through the years, dating back at least to 2004 – Thurman knows that because she has a signed copy of one of Huffington’s books from that year. “When I’ve met her, she is kind of larger than life,” Thurman said. “But she’s a real human being who I respect, and a real woman with an incredible personal story. She’s incredibly herself.” Huffington definitely has a distinct voice and look, which presented a challenge for Thurman on a few levels. “She’s a person who has been parodied by great comedians,” Thurman pointed out. “And I’m sure she would appreciate their attempts at caricaturing her. So the fine line was kind of embracing her vivacious fullness. She comes across as super confident, a person who broke through some form of self-acceptance, and you can feel it in how she sort of accepted her accent, and how she sort of has a very womanly presence.” But Thurman said that from studying Huffington, a revelation emerged. “I kept thinking, God, this person must be a bit lonely, because she’s the smartest person in most rooms,” Thurman said. “Her vocabulary alone is sort of three times the vocabulary of any average English-speaking person, and English was several languages down the pike for her. And I also just wanted to bring out that I think she’s extremely fun and amusing. She wields her power with kind of a wink, and a playfulness, that I didn’t want to sort of miss.” Asked for her thoughts on the SUPER PUMPED story overall, Thurman said, “Well, I learned that the world of technology was far more street, mafia-movie dramatic than I would have thought from my side view of what seems like clean and intellectual Silicon Valley. The intensity of the power struggles was eye-opening. Just as a consumer, I had no idea about the social and political struggle that had to take place for this industry to become something that, you know, a New York mom takes as an option. The degree of challenge behind this innovation, and this sort of lawlessness that happened in order for it to be established, I was quite blown back by the enormity of it, from a totally ignorant place.” And with all that in mind, playing a woman in this world is something that Thurman wanted to do respectfully, accurately, and understandingly. “Playing Arianna Huffington, I learned again how much more suspicion is applied to women in positions of power than their easy male counterparts,” Thurman said. “And I felt like I had a certain amount of responsibility to kind of play her side, as it was, because I think any smart, brilliant, powerful woman is always seen as, ‘was she being manipulative?’ Of course, with any powerful man, he’s manipulative. If he’s not able to be manipulative, he’s not a player. But with a woman in that same position, there’s just so much more suspicion placed on her actions. So as a woman, playing a woman in real life and in business, I took that very seriously.” Finally, what does Thurman think about “big tech” in general? “One is sort of awestruck by it,” she said. “And as anyone who has wrestled with trying to change their Apple ID and not lose your music, it’s both awesome and frightening at the same time.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv