At the end of the scene in which Eleanor Roosevelt (Harriet Sansom Harris) meets with Avis, Ellen, and Dick, she says that she has to leave to get to "dinner with Hick." "Hick" was the nickname of Lorena Alice Hickok, a journalist and one of Eleanor Roosevelt's closest friends. Hick was a lesbian, and based on evidence from the thousands of letters the two women exchanged, some historians assert that she and Eleanor were lovers for at least some of their multi-decade friendship. For a portion of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency (from January 1941 until early 1945) Hick actually lived at the White House.