Natalie Portman Says Downfall of Time’s Up Is ‘Heartbreaking’: ‘A Lot of People Made Mistakes’
Natalie Portman is reflecting on the rise and fall of the Time’s Up movement.
The ticking clock behind the movement, of which Portman was a founding member in 2018, fully “dissipated” and culminated in the CEO exiting in 2021. The Time’s Up movement was based on combating sexual harassment in the workplace. Portman opened up about the “mistakes” made leading the non-profit in a Hollywood Reporter cover story.
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“It was really, really heartbreaking that Time’s Up dissipated the way it did. I think a lot of people made mistakes, but mistakes are deadly for activism,” Portman said. “You have to be so perfect in order to demand the change that you want to see, and I don’t know, maybe acknowledging all our imperfection as humans and saying that people can do something wrong and also be good at something else, having a little bit more shades of gray might actually let us get to more progress.”
The Oscar winner continued, “There was something so powerful about just gathering women with similar experiences and sharing. And so many amazing things have spun off it that I think those relationships have persisted and have turned into incredible other projects, but it still is painful that Time’s Up doesn’t exist anymore as it was. For an entire movement to not be allowed to exist because of individual mistakes or even collective mistakes, I think that we have to be able to make mistakes and learn from them and allow that.”
Portman added, “It’s a great silencing mechanism to hold people up to perfection standards because then everyone’s like, ‘Well, I shouldn’t say anything because I’m not perfect.'”
The actress, who is next starring in Todd Haynes’ Cannes premiere “May/December,” addressed the festival’s fraught history with women amid the MeToo movement.
“I think that it’s something that they’re responding to now, which I’m happy that they’ve been pressured to do so,” Portman said. “I obviously wish it were a lot farther along…It can always be better. We will keep pushing for it to be better.”
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