Saturday Night Social: Have You Read This New Angelina Jolie Profile?

In a new profile published by The Guardian on Saturday, Angelina Jolie opens up about her ongoing divorce and custody proceedings with ex-husband Brad Pitt, whom she accused of domestic violence in 2016. She isn’t exactly direct at all times—nor does it appear like she could be, given what she terms her ongoing “legal situation” with Pitt and their kids—but here’s some of what she said, per Guardian features writer Simon Hattenstone:

“I can’t speak about that.” Look, I say, there has been so much nonsense written about you over the years, it’s impossible to distinguish between truth and fiction – you have to help me understand what you are alluding to. Are you talking about your divorce from Brad Pitt and the allegations you have made against him of domestic abuse? She tells me she is sworn to silence. Well, nod if you’re talking about the divorce and allegations. She nods. And did she fear for the safety of her children? This time she answers. “Yes, for my family. My whole family.”

It would be amazing, I say, to spend your life on the world stage, highlighting the abuse of children’s rights, and then discover that these same rights may have been compromised so close to home. “Often you cannot recognise something in a personal way, especially if your focus is on the greatest global injustices, because everything else seems smaller. It’s so hard. I’d like to be able to have this discussion and it’s so important…” She makes a couple of efforts to complete her sentence, gives up and starts again. And now the fluency returns. “I’m not the kind of person who makes decisions like the decisions I had to make lightly. It took a lot for me to be in a position where I felt I had to separate from the father of my children.”

Later in the profile, Jolie also describes how betrayed and hurt she felt by Pitt’s decision to work with convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein on more than one occasion, given that the disgraced former film producer had previously tried to assault her:

In 2009, Pitt starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, co-produced by the Weinstein Company. In 2012, she says Pitt approached Weinstein to work as a producer for the noir thriller Killing Them Softly, which the Weinstein Company later distributed. In doing so, Jolie felt he was minimising the sexual assault she had endured. “We fought about it. Of course it hurt,” Jolie says about Pitt being happy to work with Weinstein, despite knowing he had assaulted her. She avoided attending promotional events for the film.

You can read the full profile here.