The 1991 Supreme Court nomination hearings of Clarence Thomas, and the public accusation by the law professor Anita Hill that he had sexually harassed her years before, popularized the phrase “He said, she said.” (With some help from the Kevin Bacon-Elizabeth Perkins movie of the same year.) But for every he and she in such a case, there’s a “they”: the people who listen, who provide the soapbox, who control the microphone.

“Confirmation,” a conventional but smart HBO docudrama airing Saturday, features a persuasive Kerry Washington as Ms. Hill and a fiery Wendell Pierce as Mr. Thomas. But it is also about the forces massed behind each of them and sitting in uneasy judgment.

The film introduces Ms. Hill as a reluctant accuser, approached by Ricki Seidman (Grace Gummer), an aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (Treat Williams), on behalf of those who hope to scuttle the nomination in the Senate.

Ms. Hill worked under Mr. Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which handles just such harassment complaints, and she knows what she’s in for. As she puts it, “The victim tends to become the villain,” even when the balance of the judicial branch isn’t at stake. (The conservative Mr. Thomas was named to replace Thurgood Marshall, also an African-American but a liberal.)