“If they share one unifying quality, it is the ability to keep secrets,” wrote Kate Anderson Brower of the White House staff in her 2015 book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House. The book is the basis for the new Netflix show of the same name, but that’s where the similarities end. Brower’s tome is a journalistic account of several generations of workers in the private living quarters of the president of the United States and his family, whereas The Residence features a neurodivergent-coded detective named Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) solving the murder of the head usher (played by Giancarlo Esposito). The murder mystery exists at the intersection of Elsbeth and Shondaland’s other White House show, Scandal, combining political intrigue with parlor-room puzzlement—and that parlor happens to be located in the most famous house in America.
As Cupp attempts to suss out potential suspects across the domestic and wider presidential staff, we’re introduced to the housekeepers, butlers, kitchen and wait staff, engineers, custodians, curators, florists, gardeners, event planners, and secret service agents who serve at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The show dramatizes what it might be like to work in the White House, but just how true to life is it, murder aside?
The White House features a labyrinthine 132 rooms across six floors and two mezzanines. The executive residence is located in the center of the building, and includes numerous State Rooms, plus the private quarters of the first family on the second floor and third floors. Prior to 1902, the president’s office was located in the residence, but Theodore Roosevelt had it moved to what is now known as the West Wing. Today, it takes around 100 full-time and 250 part-time employees to keep the residence running smoothly, including the head usher—the murder victim on the show—who is basically the chief of staff. The sheer number of workers “are there to alleviate the burdens of daily life for the first family, who generally have no time to cook, shop, or clean,” Brower writes.
In The Residence, there’s a clear upstairs/downstairs delineation: “If you want to understand the residence, you have to understand this: It’s us versus them,” says the fictional assistant usher Jasmine Haney (Susan Kelechi Watson). “We are the house. All these other people are not part of the house. They might live here for a while, they might work here for a while, they might come in and try to influence and change things, but then they leave. And we are here.”
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We may not know if this sentiment is shared by the real-life staff, but many of them have indeed been employed at the White House for decades, “some even for generations: One family, the Ficklins, has seen nine members work in the White House,” Brower writes. Though Brower details some points of contention among different first families and their staff over the years, such as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “bullying” temperament and an unnamed first lady whose “abusive” behavior forced longtime executive housekeeper Christine Limerick to take a leave of absence between 1986 and 1991, the exchange of power runs relatively smoothly within the residence, if not outside of it. (Brower’s book was notably published in 2015.)
In fact, they run such a tight ship that the outgoing first family’s belongings are packed up and removed and the incoming family’s stuff unloaded and in place by lunchtime on the day of the inauguration. Brower writes that some first families bring less than others, delighting in choosing decor from the “climate-controlled storage facility…in Riverdale, Maryland, where every piece of furniture that was once in the White House is stored in a warehouse.” Laura Bush particularly enjoyed this excursion; the Clintons’ late night furniture rearranging gave the curators grief; and Jackie Kennedy was “appalled to find precious antiques lying on the dirt floor” of the previous storage unit and is credited with overhauling the restoration and decoration of the White House to what we think of today.
This minutiae is fascinating to presidential and architectural enthusiasts alike and The Residence incorporates the mise en scene into the mystery, Clue-style: It was [redacted] in the [redacted] room with the [redacted]. You’ll just have to watch The Residence—or be accidentally added to the group chat—to find out whodunnit.
