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Get to know Alexandra Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi’s daughter is just as familiar with the political scene as her mother, the 52nd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives — but despite not being a congresswoman herself, Alexandra has seen it through a different lens.
The youngest of the Pelosi daughters, Alexandra is a filmmaker and documentarian who’s captured her mother throughout all aspects of her life, between following her through the halls of Congress and documenting her calls withMike Penceat home while she’s doing laundry.
Often filmed in cinéma vérité style, the filmmaker’s documentaries rarely ever include sit-down interviews with theoutgoing House Speakerbecause “Nancy Pelosi is never going to sit on the couch and open up for you,” she told theNew York Times.
“If you want to learn anything from her, you just have to watch her work,” Alexandra added of her mom, which is exactly what viewers will learn from the Dec. 13 debut of her most recent HBO documentary,Pelosi in the House.
From her early love of filmmaking to her Emmy-nominated work, here’s everything to know about Alexandra.
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Nancy and her husband Paul Pelosi had five children between 1963 and 1970, of which Alexandra is the youngest daughter. Her siblings —all of which are “very different,“according to Alexandra — include sisters Jacqueline Pelosi, Christine Pelosi and Nancy Corinne Prowda and brother Paul Pelosi Jr. They all grew up in San Francisco, California.
Alexandra is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles andreceived a master’s in communications managementfrom the University of Southern California in 1993. Ever since she was young, she had an interest in film, an intrigue that laid the foundation for her successful future.
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Soon after graduation, Alexandra worked as a field producer for NBC News where she unexpectedly combined an incredible opportunity with her passion for “home movie” making — resulting in her first documentary,Journeys With George.
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Journeys With Georgemight’ve marked Alexandra’s first film success, but her interest in moviemaking began at an early age. In fact, it started long before her mother became a Democratic congresswoman.
Alexandra told theNew York Timesthatshe’s been filming her mom “forever,“while noting that “it started with a disposable camera I got for Christmas when I was little.” She added, “I became the paparazzi of the family. Taking pictures gave me something to do — the boring political functions.”
To date, Alexandra has made 14 documentaries. In 2020, she releasedAmerican Selfie: One Nation Shoots Itself, a Showtime documentary that chronicles the beginning of the pandemic in March and April of that year, centering on America’s darkest moments.
Most recently, Alexandra debuted an intimate body of work with the release ofPelosi in the Housestarting Dec. 13 on HBO. The documentary portrays the grit and determination of her mom Nancy, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, culled from over 800 hours of footage that spans decades.
The film not only highlights themajor life milestones that she’s achievedleading up to the inauguration ofPresident Joe Bidenin January 2021, but it also showcases the footage she captured fromthe Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol.
“She thinks of the Capitol as the temple of democracy — a sacred place, more than the Vatican, probably.Jan. 6 was a scar on her soul,” Alexandra told theNew York Timesahead of the documentary’s release.
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Alexandra wedDutch journalist and naturalized American citizenMichiel Vos in June 2005. He was one of the reporters on-site during the 2021 insurrection.
Vos was reporting from outside the Capitol while Alexandra and one of their sons were taken to shelter inside the building. At the time, hetook part in a phone interviewfor the Dutch television channel RTL 4’s talk showJinek.
“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” he said on call at the time. “I was standing in a melee when people literally climbed the walls of the Capitol — climbed up — like a sort of sea of people out of a sort of post-apocalyptic film…”
He continued, “I’m standing like a sort of tourist, a bad tourist, outside alone and I haven’t had any contact with [my family] for three hours because I can’t make [phone] contact.”
Vos was highlighted in Alexandra’s documentary,Citizen U.S.A., which premiered in 2011 on HBO. Dutch-born, Vos was among the many immigrants-turned-American citizens the filmmaker documentedas she visited a swearing-in ceremony in each stateduring their family’s 50-state road trip.
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Vos' decision to become a naturalized American citizen came after he and Alexandra welcomed their two children into the world, sons Paul and Thomas.
During an interview with New York Public Radio, Alexandra explained that her husband felt he needed “to have the rights to protect them and to fit in” because he “didn’t want to be a foreigner in his own family.”
Although young, Paul and Thomas haven’t shied away from the spotlight. In fact, they’ve madeseveral appearances alongside their grandmother, Nancy, at a number of her political events andmajor milestones throughout her career.
“She invites the family to everything— every State of the Union, every time she gets sworn in,” Alexandra told theNYTof Nancy.
source: people.com