Kate Winslet has (finally) expressed regrets over starring in films directed by alleged sexual abuser Woody Allen and convicted child rapist Roman Polanski. And she isn’t the only one. In recent years, a number of actors have come out to say that they wouldn’t work with Allen again. (I can’t help but think: oh, not again? Thank goodness.)
Winslet has previously hinted that she wasn’t proud of working with Allen, saying during a speech at the 2018 London Critics’ Circle Film Awards, saying “I wouldn’t be able to stand here this evening and keep to myself some bitter regrets that I have at poor decisions to work with individuals with whom I wish I had not.”
But in an interview with Vanity Fair about her upcoming film Ammonite, Winslet finally directly addressed her past decisions to work with the directors:
It’s like, what the fuck was I doing working with Woody Allen and Roman Polanski? It’s unbelievable to me now how those men were held in such high regard, so widely in the film industry and for as long as they were. It’s fucking disgraceful. And I have to take responsibility for the fact that I worked with them both. I can’t turn back the clock. I’m grappling with those regrets but what do we have if we aren’t able to just be fucking truthful about all of it?
While I can certainly appreciate Winslet’s change of heart and the fact that she is “grappling with” her regrets about working with these alleged abusers, she starred in Allen’s Wonder Wall in 2017—decades into Winslet’s career, and decades after the allegations surfaced that Allen had abused his adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow. The same is true with Carnage, the 2011 Roman Polanski film that Winslet starred in, which came out over three decades after the director pled guilty to assaulting a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
The allegations against these high-profile directors have never been a secret, and yet Winslet is just one of many actors who chose to work with them despite the horrific nature of the crimes these men were accused of. During an interview promoting Wonder Wheel in 2017, Winslet went as far as to use the tired excuse of “separating the art from the artist” to justify her choice to work with Allen.
“As the actor in the film, you just have to step away and say, I don’t know anything, really, and whether any of it is true or false. Having thought it all through, you put it to one side and just work with the person. Woody Allen is an incredible director. So is Roman Polanski. I had an extraordinary working experience with both of those men, and that’s the truth.”
High profile actors choosing to work with alleged sexual predators and then dismissing the severity of the allegations by focusing on the director’s supposed artistic gifts sends the message that abuse isn’t important if the person doing the abusing has been deemed talented. It implies that the supposed value of Allen’s art is more important than the alleged abuse experienced by Dylan Farrow. It is another way to silence survivors of sexual violence and to invalidate the harm they have experienced. Expressing regrets for your complicity in supporting an abuser is fine, but what’s much better is choosing not to work with them in the first place. [Vanity Fair]
Lindsay Lohan is being sued by publisher HarperCollins for failing to deliver a manuscript for a book deal made over six years ago. Supposedly, the book was going to be a memoir based on a diary that Lohan kept during her time in rehab in 2013.
In the suit, HarperCollins claims that they gave Lohan and her company Crossheart Productions a $365,000 advance on her $1 million book deal in early 2014 for a book that was due a year later. But even after a two year extension, the publisher never received any book. In 2018, HarperCollins let Lohan know they would be terminating the contract and demanding the advance be returned. I have to say, this would be an awfully convenient time for Lohan to accidentally body switch with Jamie Lee Curtis again. (*wink wink*). [Page Six]