‘Becoming Katharine Graham’ Directors Shine Light on Pioneering Newspaper Publisher

The trajectory of journalism as we know it may look a little different had Katharine Graham not decided to take over The Washington Post after her husband Phil Graham died by suicide in 1963. Her dad, financier Eugene Meyer, bought the paper in 1933 as it was on the verge of collapse. Rather than sell, she decided to take on the operation and its unimaginable hurdles, especially as a woman in a man’s world. 

Her trailblazing story is told through the documentary Becoming Katharine Graham. Premiering June 16 on PBS (available now on Amazon), the 2026 News & Documentary Emmy nominee digs into how the first woman to lead a Fortune 500 company steered the publication through some of its most pivotal times from reporting on the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal to not standing down despite pressure from President Richard Nixon and even the violent pressmen’s strike. 

Kay’s voice could be heard through archival footage and recordings. Longtime friend and investor Warren Buffett, son Don Graham, daughter Lally Weymouth, Gloria Steinem, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and others also give their insights. The project comes from brothers Teddy and George Kunhardt, who direct and produce. Kunhardt Films, started by their father Peter, has been at the forefront of biographical content since it was founded in 1987.

Here Teddy and George go into the making of Becoming Katharine Graham. 

You have an established track record with these documentaries, but how did you end up making this one on Katharine Graham?

Teddy Kunhardt: Let me go back a tiny step. We did this film, and I hadn’t seen it in a long time. I watched it last night to prep for this. And again, as just a viewer, not as a filmmaker, seeing all the connections to today, it’s just mind blowing. When we set out to make the film, it was never about juxtaposing then and now. I mean, that just organically happened. We did a film for HBO on Ben Bradlee called The Newspaperman. And prior to doing that film, we did a film for HBO called Becoming Warren Buffett. And when we finished The Newspaperman, we sent Warren the film and he watched it and he called us and he said, “I love the film. I think it’s great, but you missed the mark.” And we were sort of like, “Ooh! How did we miss the mark?” And he’s like, “You forgot Kay Graham. She only plays a small part in your Ben Bradlee film.” And she’s the story behind all of that. And you should really read her book. I believe he even sent us her book and he said, “One day I hope you make a film on her because she deserves it.” 

In the office in George’s room, we have a big whiteboard and we put all of our film ideas up on the whiteboard. And so we just wrote Katharine Graham on it as one of the possible ideas down the pipeline. And as we were researching and figuring out what story we wanted to tell, we did a film on Gloria Steinem for HBO —Gloria: In Her Own Words — and we realized that we hadn’t profiled that many women leaders and Kay just sort of fell into our lap and we had all of the research done for The Newspaperman.

Katharine Graham with Washington Post editors, 1971. (Credit: Katharine Graham Estate)

As you’re mentioning those names who are also featured, this project appeared to organically fall into place. 

Teddy: We just started poking around and we realized that Warren was right, that we just scratched the surface in the Bradlee film with Kay. That there was this huge, huge responsibility for the Pentagon Papers, for Watergate, for the strike. All this stuff was Katharine Graham’s story that we sort of glossed over. We made the same mistake that they did in All the President’s Men, where we focused on Ben because he’s this sexy Hollywood star and Katharine got short shifted. So for us, it just sort of organically started happening, and we pulled in all of our old interviews and then this film was like the perfect combination of all of our past films. We did a film called Nixon by Nixon, which focused all on the White House tapes. 

So we did a quick research and we just typed in Katharine Graham and tape after tape after tape. And so we kept on digging and it was just unfathomable because we always thought that Ben Bradlee was the target, but it was never Bradlee. Nixon never targeted Bradlee in the same way he targeted Katharine. And it was one of those, oh my God, this is crazy. So what we did was we took the in-house research we had and we took the tapes and we started putting them together and we’re like, “This is going to be an important film.”

We called up Warren. We said, “Look, you mentioned this a while ago. Can we come out to Omaha and interview you?” He said, “Anytime.” So I think we were out there within three weeks of calling him. And so we interviewed Warren, then we interviewed Don, we interviewed Gloria. Gloria was a surprise to us. We weren’t aware of Gloria’s presence in that until this project. So that was a nice surprise. So it was sort of here’s all these old cast of characters coming out of the woodwork from past films to now support Kay Graham.

It’s fascinating to hear Nixon on those tapes and what he thought of Katharine. Also, when you look at it from today’s lens, it adds another layer. 

George Kunhardt: To set this up a tiny bit even further with something I find fascinating. We premiered it at the Kennedy Center, which was right before it changed over leadership. A handful of Washington Post journalists were there to cover it along with those who had worked under Kay’s leadership. And they came up to us and they said, “We were tasked with going through every single Nixon tape to be able to combat what was happening in real time.” They go, “You found tapes that we did not know existed.” And they said, “This informs us as journalists in a world where you don’t know what’s being told behind the scenes.” And you see things on Twitter and what is  going on in public and the connection, but most of it happens behind closed doors.

For us to get a firsthand glance of what this was like for them and for what Kay experienced. For the actual people who were the ones that received it, it was just a jaw-dropping kind of experience for us. Look, there’s a lot of similarities to what’s happening right now, and we don’t really go into current day politics. Not to shy away from it, but it’s more just we prefer evergreen kinds of projects. As Teddy said, you just watch this for the first time in a year-and-a-half, and it still holds up. And all of our films, our goal is that in 15, 20, 30 years, you could watch these documentaries and still feel like they’re relevant in some capacity. So that’s always our goal when we make these.

Teddy: I’ll add one thing, which is the struggle between the Nixon administration and the Post. It is definitely a reminder of today. It’s clear as day. But there’s one important distinction, which is that Katharine Graham never hated Nixon. She had no hatred towards him. She didn’t like the attacks, and she didn’t like being under threat, and she didn’t like the dirty tricks, but she always understood that there’s a fine line between the paper and politics. She walked that line very concretely, and she always put the paper first. Today there’s a lot of hate and there’s a lot of venom and there’s a lot of viciousness. I don’t think she would’ve liked it.

How was it getting the family to participate? I’m sure the family was excited that you were telling this story, but there’s a lot of trust put in when a story like this is being told, and they attach themselves to it. 

Teddy: I’m so happy you brought the trust question up. Our whole philosophy, we’re a family company. Our whole philosophy is trust. Our whole reputation is trust and it is a big thing to put your whole life story or your mother’s life story or your dad’s story. We just finished the Mario Cuomo film. To put your trust in our hands, for us, it’s key. So because Warren had the family support, they sort of supported it as well. When we interviewed Don, we’d interviewed him for the Ben Bradlee film. So he already knew who we were. He already knew we could deliver a good film and he was sort of, I wouldn’t say apprehensive. He was fully supportive, and he had never seen a lot of the footage. So when George and I went down to D.C. to interview him, we showed him the footage of the burning effigy, he said, “I remember being in there and looking down, but I’ve never seen that footage.”

And our archival producer found that footage still on film rolls and had the networks transfer it. So there is no way he could have seen it. I think they came away being very appreciative of the fact that nobody in this day and age is going to read a 500-page memoir, but they might sit for an hour-and-a-half documentary. I think that we captured Kay in a way that’s authentically Kay and…I know they’re happy with it.

George: Well, they’re definitely happy. I’ll add that we did not take the salacious route with this documentary. A lot of people may have about Phil’s suicide…We took the high road and built their trust so they understood that we weren’t trying to play gotcha journalism and anything. And I think that resonates with the Graham family and all the interviewees that we participate with. So it is all about trust.

Katharine Graham Estate

Was there a big challenge making this you had to overcome? 

George: It was hard, especially at the end of the production with distribution, with marketing, with everything of a story of an upper class white woman who’s deceased and comes from a world of privilege. So just the viewership and just getting people’s attention on this story was a challenge. And it was hard to get distributors and people to even engage in a conversation about it, which quite frankly, is pretty mind-blowing to all of us because she’s such an icon. She’s such an important story, and it’s such a relevant story to today. But I think just getting excitement and building that momentum between just getting people to staff up for the project and to release it was a challenge. I think ultimately everyone came around and understood how significant the story was and why everyone wanted to participate, but that was a challenge at least toward the end of the project.

Teddy: I was going to say, we want to be careful with our words. We’re very, very happy PBS is going to be doing a national distribution of this film. As George said, the hardest part was not making it, that was fun and enjoyable but placing this film has been a nightmare. Colleagues that we’ve worked with wouldn’t even open the link. Everyone wants serial killers, murders. The appetite for these old historical biographies is fading. And one thing our father has taught us is to stick with what we do and do it the best and keep doing it because the tides will come back where people are hungry for this type of content. And we are so grateful to PBS to be allowing us to tell Kay’s story on a national level.

George: You picked up where I was trying to get to, which is now going to be seen by millions of people, which is what we want. And it’s like, that’s what’s missing in this world. And I’m glad that we’re going to have that opportunity here because when you put this out there, you’ll see that there’s such a fan base of Kay and the story, but it just didn’t get the recognition or notoriety that we’re hoping it would. We’re excited that that’s going to be the next phase of this.

She died mere months before 9/11. In the years since, what do you think she would think about the world since her passing? Would she have appreciated Meryl Streep playing her in The Post after being omitted from  All the President’s Men. 

Teddy: I think it would’ve been a thrill for her, but she always had an issue with self-confidence. And even with Meryl Streep playing her and even with this documentary, I think she would’ve been proud and happy and felt vindicated for being left out of All the President’s Men, but there’s always going to be that little voice, probably her mother’s voice, in the back of her head saying, “Am I good enough?” I thought it was a touching moment in the film when she finally forgives her mom and says, “There’s a statute of limitations of what you can put on a parent.” But that whole philosophy of women in her generation —that they were lesser than, and that they had to be quiet to the men — even though she learned how to deal with it and even though she learned how to speak up and speak loud and be taken seriously, I think there was always that little voice that would’ve said, “Am I good enough?”

So I think it would’ve been mixed regarding today’s political landscape, I think she would’ve been happy to have the news at her fingertips so she could get the truth out quickly and be able to fight with truth. That said, I think she would be disappointed that history is repeating itself.

George: Yeah. I think she’d be very disappointed with how much fake material and news and disinformation there is out there. And she’s such a believer in hard facts, thoughtful storytelling. I think that those little short lines would be upsetting to her in that regard.

Teddy: I mean, one distributor that watched the film and liked it said, “You have to put in that you used AI.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” She said, “You’ve used AI for Katharine’s voice.” And we said, “No, that’s her book on tape.” I mean, we had access to the outtakes of the book on tape and there’s absolutely no AI. We’re fundamentally against putting AI like that in film. And then they said, “Well, if we take it, you’re going to have to put this film is not AI.” Wow.

We said, “Well, no, no, that’s not our job.” George and I have been doing this for almost 20 years. Our father’s been doing it for 50 years. We have a track record and we’re not going to mess it up using a shortcut. And that’s super important to us. And one of the things that we do at Life Stories —and we haven’t done it quite yet with Becoming Katharine Graham, but we will. We take all the raw interviews that we use to make the film and we put them online on our website for free with a transcript so you can see exactly what was in the film, what was not in the film, how it was used, if it was used. We don’t use it out of context, but if it was something used out of context, a viewer can see it because they’re going to see the raw interview.

That’s amazing. It’s like having a time capsule right there for you whenever you want to go to it.

Teddy: Since you’re into films, into TV, you should check out our website because we have over 500 interviews from all walks of life that we’ve conducted over the years. It’s all free. We’ve got educational material and we’ve just started a new partnership with a nonprofit called Edovo. So we’re getting all this material into the prison system. So incarcerated men and women can study these interviews and do our courses. 

George: To help reduce recidivism and help them with reentry into the world.

Becoming Katharine Graham PBS premiere, June 16, PBS (Check Local Listings)