Jessica Chastain Condemns Hollywood Hypocrisy In Harvey Weinstein Scandal
The entertainment industry needs to start practicing what it preaches, Jessica Chastain says.
The Zero Dark Thirty actress called out Hollywood’s hypocrisy in a speech this week delivered at Elle magazine’s Women in Entertainment event in Beverly Hills, The Hollywood Reporter detailed.
The feminist leading lady said that Hollywood should stop the finger-pointing and look inward, particularly given, but not limited to, the Harvey Weinstein scandal, in which the powerful movie mogul stands accused of a pattern of sexual harassment and sexual assault of aspiring starlets, staffers and other women in his orbit over a 30-year period.
“This is an industry rife with racism, sexism and homophobia. It is so closely woven into the fabric of the business that we have become snowblind to the glaring injustices happening every day…Oh we’re very quick to point the finger at others and address the issue with social action and fundraising. Yet there is a clear disconnect between how we practice what we preach in our industry.”
She also made reference to the leaked Access Hollywood tape that almost derailed the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
“We rally against the presidential candidate who slants a narrative of his sexual assault as mere locker room talk, but at the same time we ignore the stories and warnings of sexual predators in our offices.”
The leaked NBC audio resulted in the future president being denounced by many in the liberal entertainment community.
Parenthetically, Chastain, 40, recently backed up The Martian co-star Matt Damon when he claimed that he had no knowledge of Weinstein’s misconduct.
In her exposition, the Interstellar star also recalled how unprofessional male colleagues sometimes showed up on the set drunk, or in one case, a male producer spanked her as she walked by. Chastain noted that she didn’t make waves at the time for career reasons, but now has no reluctance to speak up. She also alluded to Hollywood’s public support of same-sex marriage while at the same time telling certain performers to stay closeted.
Jessica Chastain last year starred in the gun control opus Miss Sloane, which flopped at the box office. She is joining the cast of the next installment of the X-Men franchise, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which will likely be a box office success. She is set to play Lilandra, the leader of the alien empire called the Shi’ar, in the film, which is scheduled to premiere in November 2018.
The Weinstein Company distributed Chastain’s 2013 film The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, “because the director wanted him, even after I spoke against it,” the actress explained, according to Comicbook.com. Apparently, the Oscar-nominated star had been warned about Harvey Weinstein by other actresses.
Reacting to Jessica Chastain’s remarks at the Elle event suggesting that Hollywood needs to get its own house in order, Breitbart News website underscored the irony of an industry that championed the Republican War on Women political narrative and that heavily supported Hillary Clinton for president having “the dirtiest and most disgusting backyard in corporate history.”
[Featured Image by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Image]
