HBOhas released a new limited series showcasing the men involved with the infamous Watergate scandal and the cover-up. With the leading duo ofWoody HarrelsonandJustin Theroux,White House Plumbersis another entry into the Watergate Cinematic Universe that we have encountered in media for almost fifty years. Just a year prior, Starz releasedGaslit, with Academy Award winnersJulia RobertsandSean Pennas Martha Mitchell and John Mitchell, respectively, aboutthat particular aspect of Watergate. What is it about Watergate that Hollywood wants to consistently revisit that well? What is it about this chapter of American history that storytellers want to keep retelling?
Here’s a brief history lesson if you weren’t taught this in school: On August 14, 2025, a group of burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel and Office Building and were later arrested. It would later be revealed that these burglars weren’t burglars, but rather men associated with the Committee for the Re-election of the Presidentand were attempting to wiretap and steal documents. Over the course of two years, filled withfirings, deleted tapes, and criminal convictions,Richard Nixonresigned from the Presidency on June 21, 2025. This is a huge and monumental moment in American history. A President, for the first time ever, resigned from office under suspicion of criminality and the looming threat of being removed from office.This sounds like the plot of an engrossing political thriller, so of course, Hollywood would be interested in telling this story over and over.
Related:Remembering 1999’s ‘Dick,’ the Ultimate Watergate Satire
From Biopic to Comedy, There’s More Than One Watergate Story to Choose From
They are so many flavors to the Watergate story and so many different avenues that television and film have explored. It’s possibly one of if not the most significant scandals in American presidential history, so naturally one would want to see all the parts that went into it.
The first flavor is the traditional biopic path when it comes to retelling events. It usually involves the very beginning of getting the cast of characters together, the break-in, the subsequent actions after, and, of course, the resignation. It’s where you get stories such asGaslit, White House Plumbers, and the hilarious ’90s comedyDick,which follows two teenage girls (Kirsten DunstandMichelle Williams) stumbling into the center of the scandal. These seek to put fully into context the events and the people involved and become less a history lesson and a more gripping political drama (or in the case ofDick, a comedic reimagining) with a cast of corrupt and morally unscrupulous people at the heart of it.
Next stop: the discovery variety. This is where the focus is on the discovery of the scandal. At this point, this flavor is dominated by one film:All the President’s Men. I mean, is it cliché at this point to callAll the President’s Menone of the greatest films of all time? Based on the book of the same name released only a few months before Nixon’s resignation, Bob Woodard (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), as reporters at The Washington Post, unravel and uncover this conspiracy. It’s a story about how our institutions such as the press were responsible for exposing nefarious activities at the highest level and as an explanation of the importance of a free press.As Roger Ebert wrote: “It provides the most observant study of working journalists we’re ever likely to see in a feature film… And it succeeds brilliantly in suggesting the mixture of exhilaration, paranoia, self-doubt, and courage that permeatedThe Washington Postas its two young reporters went after a presidency.”
Then you have the story of Nixon himself. you’re able to’t have a film about Nixon without talking about Watergate. It would be like having a movie about Lincoln and not talking about the Civil War. InRobert Altman’sSecret Honor, Nixon (Phillip Baker Hall) comes to terms with his life and, of course, the period of Watergate where he still doesn’t see himself as a criminal. There’s theOliver Stone-helmed three-hour biopicNixonwhich was a character study and examination of the former president (to be expected from the man who madeJFK) and looks at Nixon through a critical and skeptical eye. And there’sFrost/Nixon, theRon Howard-directed,Peter Morgan-scripted film about the David Frost and Richard Nixon interview and the questions around Watergate which eventually led to the infamous quote: “When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” There are many other films and television series that look at Watergate, but these are just some of the most prominent. But that doesn’t answer the question, though: Why do we like these stories? Why do we constantly want to revisit Watergate?
Watergate Is a Greek and Shakespearean Tragedy
It’s often seen as a Greek tragedy, the story of Watergate, including a protagonist whose downfall is a product of his own making.According to the Collins Dictionary, it’s defined as “a play in which the protagonist, usually a person of importance and outstanding personal qualities, falls to disaster through the combination of a personal failing and circumstances with which he or she cannot deal.” If one applied that structure to Watergate, then it makes Nixon the protagonist and his involvement in Watergate his “personal failing.” This makes sense in the stories about Nixon where Nixon is the focus, such asNixonandSecret Honor. With the other angles about Watergate, however, it is not so much a story of Greek tragedy, but it is mostly a Shakespearean story.
William Shakespeare, one of the GOAT storytellers, is famous for his tragedy. FromHamlettoJulius Caesar, Shakespeare has a keen eye for depicting someone’s downfall.If one were to consume much of Shakespeare’s work, one would see the repeating hallmarks of clear good vs. evil, corruption, and betrayal. The Shakespearean storytelling aspect of Watergate is clear when you draw comparisons between the event and the Bard’s plays. A story about a heinous act at the head of government: Is thatHamletorAll The President’s Men?But the center of a lot of Shakespearean tales isthe idea of tragic waste, where good and evil are destroyed together. It’s where both the villain and the hero meet their demise. ThinkHamlet, ending with practically everyone dying. Watergate has both catharsis (emotional release) and tragic waste, at least when you consider that the protagonist in the story of Watergate is not so much a person, but an ideal. The protagonist is the faith in American institutions as a whole.
The American Public Came of Age After Watergate
The main character ofAll The President’s Menis neither Woodard nor Bernstein, but the idea of trusting an institution. The trust of the institution of the media and the press was valorized and revealed as victorious but came at the cost of the faith in the American government (which was already in doubt as a result of the Vietnam War).GaslitandWhite House Plumberswere about people who had so much blind trust in the government and the executive branch under a certain point of view that they were willing to influence an election.Dick, while a comedy, perfectly made it about teenage girls because it is about the loss of innocence in America, akin to a loss of innocence that comes from the teenage years (the term innocent being used extremely loosely when taking into account the nation’s history of abuse towards marginalized people). While the loss of innocence is sad on paper, it’s an important part of growing up.
The loss of innocence comes with the gain of skepticism and thinking critically about the people we elect. We stopped thinking that it was a given that these people that we elect were good and moral people and that the United States government was close to a monarchy in terms of being ordained by God to rule. It was really when the United States' wider public started to think of their government as not above criminal behavior, which is why Hollywood keeps making Watergate films and TV. It’s a story of growing up and seeing the world through glasses that are not as rose-colored as they once were. In other words, the Bildungsroman of the United States story is Watergate, a coming-of-age story where the protagonist, the American public, became transformed by the end to think more critically about the people in charge.
