Actress Who Plays Palin Found Her Selection ‘Pretty Terrifying’

The prospect of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008 was “pretty terrifying” to actress Julianne Moore, who plays Palin in HBO’s upcoming Game Change movie about the 2008 campaign, but not because she feared Palin’s policies. Instead, the self-described “longtime liberal” dreaded Palin might allow the GOP ticket to win: “I really felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, the Republicans might have this election’” since “she was so electrifying.”
 
In Tuesday’s “Yeas and Nays” column in the Washington Examiner, Nikki Schwab relayed Moore’s comments expressed in an interview for the upcoming March issue of Capitol File magazine.

Moore explained how she recognized Palin’s political appeal:

Here’s a woman who’s a parent, who’s an actual working mother, who worked her way up from local government, who was definitely middle working class, married to a commercial fisherman....She was incredibly relatable, she was attractive, she was young; she was speaking to a wide portion of the population that didn’t feel that they’d been noticed or seen or heard.

In her February 14 item (posted on February 13) “Julianne Moore: Sarah Palin was ‘pretty terrifying,’” Schwab quoted Moore:

“I would say, as a registered Democrat and longtime liberal, I think that I speak for a lot of women when I say that when [Palin] burst onto the scene, the way that she did that was pretty terrifying because I really felt like, Oh my gosh, the Republicans might have this election,” Moore recalled of her first perceptions of Palin back in 2008. “She was so electrifying as a figure, it kind of blew everyone away.”

Game Change will debut on Saturday night, March 10.