Butler Cecil Gaines gets a position in the White House that lasts for 30 years. He serves seven US presidents and bears witness to some of the most important turning points in American history, including the Vietnam war and the struggles of the Civil Rights movement. Fact-based drama, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, with Robin Williams, John Cusack and Alan Rickman.

Cecil Gaines was a sharecropper's son who grew up in the 1920s as a domestic servant for the white family who casually destroyed his. Eventually striking out on his own, Cecil becomes a hotel valet of such efficiency and discreteness in the 1950s that he becomes a butler in the White House itself. There, Cecil would serve numerous US Presidents over the decades as a passive witness of history with the American Civil Rights Movement gaining momentum even as his family has troubles of its own. As his wife, Gloria, struggles with alcoholism and his defiant eldest son, Louis, strives for a just world, Cecil must decide whether he should take action in his own way.