new video loaded: Minnie Driver on the #MeToo Cause
transcript
Minnie Driver on the #MeToo Cause
Jodi Rudoren of The New York Times spoke with the British actress Minnie Driver about Matt Damon, Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement.
“What was interesting about Matt Damon — which was not interesting to the media, but was very interesting to me — but he represented every intelligent, nice, white male who feels it is their job to comment on the way that women metabolize stuff. And what he happened to be talking about, in this instance, was how women should metabolize abuse, that we should somehow have a hierarchical system whereby a touch on the ass is this, the tits is this, you know, front bottom, back bottom, over the shirt, rape. You know, that there would be some kind of criteria. Also, there is no way this moves forward unless we do this together. Think about the model of truth and reconciliation. Think about that. Use that as the model. Women, people, you get to speak out, you get to be heard, you get to be seen and heard. And the accusers get to hear that. They get to metabolize that. And then there is due process and then there is healing.” You were the first celebrity to speak out about Oxfam, or the first one to resign. You’ve been working with this charity for 20 years. “I’ve been an ambassador for 20 years. Apart from my mom and my dad and my family, I haven’t been in a 20-year relationship with anyone. They’re the longest relationship I’ve been in in my life is with Oxfam. It broke my heart in more ways — this makes me want to start crying now, because the primary programs I have been involved with with Oxfam are to do with women who have to work as sex workers to supplement their income. I needed to send a very clear message, not to the beautiful people that I’ve worked with on the ground for so many years, who are amazing and industrious, but to the corporation that knew, the corporate people who knew this was going on, who hush-hushed it, who were not transparent about it, either with me or the people that worked for them, and who didn’t do anything about it. They need to clean house. They need to clean house.” It’s Harvey Weinstein, who, of course, you worked with. But you were not in these stories. You were not sexually harassed by Weinstein. “Wait, I had a different story, which I talked about a few years before — I feel like it was on “Ellen” or it was on something. He didn’t want to cast me because he said to my face, and to the casting director, to Ben, to Matt, to Chris Moore, who was the actual producer of the movie on the set, and to Gus Van Sant, that — and I quote — I was not fuckable. Whatever. That’s just business. I got off really — I got off lightly with him. I really did.” What about the broader question, though, of how male power plays itself out in Hollywood, and sexual harassment in Hollywood? “But here’s the thing. So when we talk about sexual harassment, it’s not about sex. It’s about power, first and foremost, to me and to loads of women. I spoke to so many people before doing this, and it comes up so often in conversation with men and women. It’s about power.”
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