Melissa McCarthy Is Very Sorry for Accidentally Being Involved With a Homophobic, Anti-Abortion Charity

By Megan Reynolds  |  November 13, 2020 | 2:45pm
CelebritiesDirt Bag
Melissa McCarthy Is Very Sorry for Accidentally Being Involved With a Homophobic, Anti-Abortion Charity
Image:Emma McIntyre (Getty Images)

I believe in my heart of hearts that everyone, including celebrities, is out here trying their best to do the halfway decent thing. This is perhaps why Melissa McCarthy, a celebrity that genuinely seems nice, has made some adjustments to her 20 Days of Kindness campaign (?) after discovering one of the charities in question is run by a man who does not like abortion or queer people.

The campaign is in support of a movie called Superintelligence, which is going to be on HBO Max, and, like many of the things on HBO Max, looks like something I’d watch if only HBO Max was available on my TV streaming platform of choice. (My impassioned plea: HBO and Roku, can you please resolve your differences, winter is coming, thank you.) Anyway, this campaign highlights a charity a day for 20 days, hence 20 days of kindness, and whoops, oh no, one of those charities, Exodus Cry, is purportedly quite bad—posing as a charity that is ostensibly against sex trafficking, but whose founder is actually quite homophobic, anti-abortion and also anti-sex-work.

Given the nature of her apology, it seems clear that she had no idea what the charity was about, and honestly, I doubt she had very much to do with the vetting process? Someone at HBO Max, who threw this campaign together under duress, maybe, is the one to blame. Or we can blame no one, and just accept this for what it is, which is a genuine mistake.

“There’s no other way to say it,” she said in an Instagram video. “We blew it. We made a mistake and we backed a charity that upon proper vetting stands for everything that we do not.” Yes! Correct. You did. It’s OK. Nothing to see here. [Just Jared]

Listen, Keanu Reeves is a good man (one of the only, I think, maybe?) and he is aging like a fine wine, so I’m not sure what to do with this report detailing how the cast of The Matrix 4 broke quarantine protocols in Berlin and threw a lil’ party.

Germany is in the middle of a “partial lockdown” that prohibits large gatherings, and events like wrap parties, that involve many people together in a room breathing on each other, require registration with the local health department, and are capped at 50 people, max. This does not seem like that.

From Page Six:

They were treated to a pyrotechnics and dance performance, a DJ playing on a packed dance floor, tattoo stations inside caravans, several bars serving wine and sake, a sushi and dessert station (sans red or blue pills) and cushioned Bedouin tents, German newspaper Bild reported.
Reeves and girlfriend Alexandra Grant were seen at the bash with a bottle of wine on their table. “Matrix” franchise creators Lana and Lilly Wachowski were also reportedly there.
One guest told the paper, “The mood was exuberant. There was a rapid [COVID-19] test for everyone in advance. Everyone had to come with a mask, but many didn’t wear them later.”

Happy that everyone is having a good time, happy that this happened. Everyone is, as ever, going to make their own choices and assess risk based on their personal comfort levels, but if famous people are going to continue to flout the rules as if they are above them, they have GOT to do a better job of hiding it from the rest of us. [Page Six]