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It's a fine State of Affairs

Having campaigned for Barack Obama during his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, Alfre Woodard was more than prepared for the role of US president on Seven's new political drama State of Affairs.

The show centres on a team of CIA analysts, led by Katherine Heigl's Charleston Tucker, who have the arduous task of preparing a daily briefing of the nation's most vital security issues for President Constance Payton, portrayed by Woodard.

The four-time Emmy Award winner, whose long list of credits includes Hill Street Blues, The Practice, Desperate Housewives and True Blood, says she was drawn to the show as soon as she saw her character involved in a violent ambush in the opening scene of the pilot episode.

"Usually I'm doing very calm, dramatic family situations, so it was excitement right off the bat for the president," Woodard enthuses.

In addition to Woodard's public support for Obama, she's a member of the Democratic Party and active on the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

She drew on this experience in her role as the commander-in-chief.

"I have been involved in politics since I was a teenager and I've spent a lot of time in Washington over the past 30 years and I know people there, so I loved the politics of this show and knowing that it is all so complicated," she says.

"People think 'Why don't they just do this, why don't they just do that' but it's an impossibly complicated board game that you're being manoeuvred around."

The international relations are based on real world events with the authenticity boosted thanks to the creative input of former CIA analyst Rodney Faraon.

Woodard says she expected someone who worked under three presidents to be more hardline. "There is nothing cynical about him, he is a joyous kind of guy, very open and kind and he laughs a lot," she says. "He was saying to us 'They're loving the show over in Langley'. I said 'That makes me nervous, I'm nervous if they don't like it and I'm even more nervous if they do like it'. He said 'They think you're a great president, they think you're the best president'. Oh my God!"

State of Affairs goes beyond the walls of the CIA, also known as Langley due to its Virginia location, when early in the pilot episode it becomes very clear that Heigl's character's personal life is suffering due to the stress of her pressure-cooker role.

Woodard says the president's flaws are revealed as the season progresses as the perfect storm of how she became Obama's successor is slowly revealed.

"I got man issues and I got control issues and I have women's issues, as all professional women have," she reveals. "As pressure mounts, you see Constance Payton run her office like a military campaign because that's her wheelhouse, and it does not sit well with a certain segment of the population."

While Woodard is the first female president in the fictional world of State of Affairs, she envisages life will imitate art when Americans go to the polls next year to vote for the 45th president.

"I think it will be Hillary Rodham Clinton," she forecasts. "She is very fit for the task and again there's a time and history that we as a nation, as a culture, it's time for us, we all feel the need for it and it's always great when the will of the people matches up with a person fit for the task and she is it."