Rose McGowan Slams Natalie Portman's Oscars Cape with Female Director Names: 'Deeply Offensive'
Rose McGowan is accusing Natalie Portman of being in “fake support of other women” after she accessorized her 2020 Oscars look with the names of all the female directors who were not recognized by the Academy.
While walking the red carpet Sunday, Portman, 38, wore a black cape embroidered with the names of several female directors like Greta Gerwig and Lulu Wang who were snubbed for Best Director nominations — which activist and actress McGowan said she found “deeply offensive to those of us who actually do the work.”
On Tuesday, McGowan spoke out against Portman’s fashion statement on Facebook, asserting her “Oscar ‘protest'” was “more like an actress acting the part of someone who cares.”
McGowan, 46, argued that Portman is “the problem” because she claimed the actress has only “worked with two female directors in your very long career- one of them was you,” adding that Portman’s production company, Handsomecharlie Films, “has hired exactly one female director- you.”
However, The Guardian, pointed out that Portman has actually worked with additional female directors in her career — Mira Nair on the short film New York, I Love You and Rebecca Zlotowski on Planetarium.
“You ‘A-listers’ could change the world if you’d take a stand instead of being the problem. Yes, you, Natalie. You are the problem. Lip service is the problem,” McGowan added.
A rep for Portman did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
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She continued, “I am singling you out because you are the latest in a long line of actresses who are acting the part of a woman who cares about other women. Actresses who supposedly stand for women, but in reality do not do much at all. Of course women in the world will keep buying the perfumes you promote, the movies you make, and think they’re buying into who you are. But who are you?”
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In 2018, Portman also made headlines when she called out the Golden Globes for its exclusion of female nominees in the best director category while presenting the award alongside Ron Howard.
“And here are all the male nominees,” she said before introducing the five men up for the award at the time.
There have only been five female directing nominees in the Oscars‘ 92-year history.
In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the best director award for her film, The Hurt Locker.
