THE JURY MIGHT be out as far as the rest of America is concerned, but in Hollywood, at least, it appears that a woman can be president. Not one but two television series featuring a female leader of the free world have hit US screens in recent months, lending fuel to the debate about whether a woman - be it Hillary Clinton or Condoleezza Rice - will enter the 2008 race for the White House. Recent polls are more or less unanimous that most Americans would vote for a woman if they thought she was the best candidate. But sitting before a life-size model of Air Force One's fuselage on a Los Angeles backlot, Geena Davis, who plays President Mackenzie Allen in Commander in Chief, is more circumspect. 'The polls say up to 80 per cent of Americans would be comfortable voting for a woman, but who knows what would actually happen? It's a nice thing to say on a form.' Yet if Clinton or Rice end up running in two years, they may owe a small debt of gratitude to Davis. The 50-year-old's performances in the series, which premiered in Hong Kong on Friday, earned Davis a Golden Globe award for best actress in a television drama. In her acceptance speech she regaled the audience with details of a heart-rending exchange with a little girl who told her she wanted to be president when she grew up. When Davis admitted that the encounter was entirely made up, she brought the house down. 'I had thought of it a couple of days as a joke and my husband said I should do it. So I did. But then when everybody went, 'Ahh', I started thinking, 'Oh, my god. Should I just leave it at that, or are they going to be really disappointed when I say that wasn't true?' But it worked out great.' However much Commander in Chief may have affected mainstream attitudes to woman politicians, Davis says she's received nothing but positive feedback. 'From the people that come up to me, I really see such a strong, strong reaction,' she says. 'They don't just say, 'Oh, I like your show' or, 'You're the president'. They say, 'Thank you. This is so important. I'm so glad they're doing this.' And they really are attaching some great significance to the fact that this is [a woman president].' Davis' Mackenzie Allen - a mother of three who happens to be vice-president - goes against the wishes of an incapacitated and dying president, and of her entire party, by taking over the nation's highest office and becoming the first female commander-in-chief. In the process, she finds herself endlessly at odds with her sceptical, largely male White House staff, and is forever sparring with Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton, played by a wonderfully reptilian Donald Sutherland. 'There's just so much conflict for her to deal with,' Davis says. 'I mean, this is ... this is revolutionary for Washington. Templeton articulates, 'What about Muslim nations? You have any hope that they're going to deal with a female president?' It's an impossibility, but she lands on her feet and she finds her way - and the crises just keep coming.' In many ways, Davis was a celluloid US president waiting to happen. The academy award-winning actress (The Accidental Tourist, 1988) - who graduated with a degree in drama from Boston University in 1979, and whose modelling career led her to a role in Sydney Pollack's Tootsie in 1982 - has become something of a feminist figure through her performances in 1980s classics as Thelma & Louise and A League of Their Own. She's also brainy (an IQ of 140 and membership of Mensa) and made the semi-finals of the Olympic archery team when she was in her 40s. Gender equality is a subject close to her heart - she's involved with the non-profit organisation Dads and Daughters and helped set up See Jane (seejane.org), which lobbies for greater balance between the numbers of male and female characters in children's television and movies. 'It would be hard to argue that kids are better off if characters in movies and TV shows they watch are predominantly male,' Davis says. 'For boys to see girls taking up half the space on the planet is a really good thing. And for girls to see themselves taking up half the space is a good thing.' It doesn't hurt that, at 1.83 metres tall, Davis often finds herself towering above men. So when the lead in Commander in Chief came around, she was a logical choice. She admits that it might have been tailor-made for her. 'As soon as I heard about it, I thought, 'Why didn't I ever think of that?' I'm always thinking about, what do I want to play, what would be great, what would be fun and inspiring and challenging. And so I think playing the first female president is all of that. And it also just sort of made sense as far as the trajectory of my career has gone. I've increasingly wanted to play female characters that have interesting things to do, that are complicated, that are central to the story and that make their own choices about their own fate. 'And also [the fact] that women can watch and identify with it. I think there are so few opportunities for women to watch something and go, 'Yeah'. And I think I got spoiled early on. I mean, Thelma & Louise was that kind of experience where, if I'm driving in traffic sometimes, the car next to me would be honking wildly and it's a car full of women going, 'Whoo!' And that just doesn't happen when you're playing things like Earth Girls Are Easy. So I kind of got hooked on that.' That her character is also a working mother was an attraction for Davis, who has three young children with Reza Jarrahy, her fourth husband, whom she married in 2001. Davis became a mother for the first time - at the age of 46 - in 2002 and has since given birth to twin boys. Davis' children are regular visitors to the set, but juggling motherhood and a busy acting career is a constant challenge - an experience she's able to bring to her role in Commander in Chief. 'It would be the same for a female president as any working mother. It's just tough, but, you know, a lot of people don't have a choice about it. I mean, the vast majority of American women have to work. They don't have the luxury of saying, 'Well, should I stay home with the kids, or should I work?' The family needs that income, so you've just got to make it work somehow. And I think that's what we're trying to show with the president. You know, it's like the highest and oddest example of it, but to see that the same kind of things go on in the First Family is pretty interesting.' Although Davis' characters in Thelma & Louise and Commander in Chief couldn't be more different, she sees certain similarities between the two. 'The ultimate metaphor that Thelma & Louise had was that it was women who refused to give up control of their own lives. They took it as far as they could. And, you know, they fly off to freedom. And this character is trying to keep her moral centre in the face of all this pressure and the wheeling and dealing that goes on in Washington. So, I think that's really interesting. She hears the advice but she has a gut instinct about what needs to be done.' That Davis' president is guided by an overwhelming sense of moral purpose - she doesn't have to toe a strict party line - is one of Commander in Chief's hooks. So, does Davis believe that her character represents the presidency as Americans would like it to be, rather than how it is? 'Absolutely. I don't think there's any question that watching this character fulfils the wish that we all have. We want to believe that the person we elect to represent us is going to have the moral fibre and the backbone to do what's right, rather than what's forced upon and pushed upon them, what's politically expedient, what the polls say - that they're going to be somebody that will do the right thing for us. And I don't know that we can say that happens incredibly often. But it is what we want.' Commander in Chief, ATV World, Fridays, 9pm
