Zoe Kazan Recalls Sexual Harassment by Producer: ‘I Did Not Feel I Could Say Anything’
Zoe Kazan can currently be seen in the new movie The Big Sick, but she’s been appearing onscreen since 2003. And now, as a veteran actor, she’s been able to look back on some difficult moments.
She recently told the Guardian that sexual harassment is rampant on movie sets (she was quick to mention that was not the case with The Big Sick) and that solutions are not easily found.
“We don’t have a redress,” Kazan said. “We have our union, but no one ever resorts to that, because you don’t want to get a reputation for being difficult.”
Kazan explained that she and her actress friends have felt subtly harassed at auditions. She said, “…We’ve talked about having to go into a room and give ‘blowjob eyes. You know, be flirty with a director or a producer.”
Other times, the harassment is much more explicit. She recalled when an unnamed producer made a vulgar oral sex comment to her: “He’d say, ‘Oh, it’s a joke, ha ha.’ … I was in my mid-20s at the time. I was not powerful; I did not feel I could say anything. … It makes you feel guilty, and bad, as if it’s somehow your fault — that you’re somehow giving that person the signal that it’s OK to treat you that way.”
Kazan has been dating actor Paul Dano for 10 years, and they’ve discussed this “toxic masculinity.” She says he never encounters the same level of debasement and sexism.
In other entertainment news, Jennie Garth squashed the rumor that she dissed Tiffani Thiessen:
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