130 including several powerful gay and transsexual characters; and offering plots tied to

Broadway musicals like Hairspray and West Side Story, has well earned its camp status. Perhaps, though, the character of , as played by Williams, provides the lion‟s share of Betty‟s campiness. And, the intertextuality of Williams‟ professional narrative greatly enhances Wilhelmina‟s – hence, the show‟s – camp nature.

Wilhelmina, like her portrayer, derives power from her public scandals and subsequent triumphs, from her race, and from her gender. Thus, Williams‟ story has enabled her over all other Hollywood actresses to play this character. In fact, in an interview with Geoff

Bennett, the actor recalls,

The producers wanted to meet with me, but I was out of the country, and they ended up casting someone else. And I got a call the day before they were about to start shooting, saying they wanted to hire me. I looked at the script and ended up on the set the next day for a costume fitting. (2-3)

Obviously, the team behind Betty recognized the kinship which Williams has with

Wilhelmina, a character to whom Bennett refers as an “over-the-top diva” (3). At the very least, the character‟s moniker, in part, highlights the relationship between the two as her first name (Wilhelmina) directly references her player‟s last (Williams).20 The similarities don‟t end there, though. Watching just the first season of the series demonstrates this.

Throughout Season One (the only one considered here), Wilhelmina schemes to take down (Alan Dale) and his son, Daniel (Eric Mabius). After Fey

Sommers‟ death, the senior Meade, who runs the publishing empire Meade Enterprises, passed Wilhelmina over, giving Sommers‟ job as Editor-in-Chief of the top-selling women‟s fashion magazine, Mode, to his untested progeny, Daniel. Wilhelmina, Mode‟s longtime Creative Director, patently refuses to accept this (especially given the negative