Thomas Middleditch on #MeToo: 'As a male human, it’s kind of scary'

Thomas Middleditch says the current #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have made it “kind of scary” to be a man.

In an interview with A.V. Club, the Silicon Valley star was asked about the sexual assault allegations made against his former costar T.J. Miller (he has denied the accusations).

“I think that’s the tricky thing with all this stuff,” Middleditch responded. “Speaking as a guy, as a man, as a male human, it’s kind of scary, with this fervor that’s surrounding it, where an allegation can just pop up and then it’s really incumbent upon you to fervently defend your character. I’m not gonna dive into what’s real or not. I’m just saying it’s a little bit scary.”

Then, unprompted, the actor brought up the controversy surrounding a story detailing a sexual encounter between Aziz Ansari and an unidentified woman, calling it “absurd.”

“Like, there’s a difference between assault and just kind of strange sex,” he said. “You don’t want to live in a world where it’s just so stiff that there’s no, I don’t know, something? I don’t know where I’m going with that, but I don’t really know enough about [the allegations against Miller] to comment on. Just don’t know about it, really. But it is tricky, you know. It’s weird. It’s like we live in a world where currently the climate, let’s say, is where a j’accuse will really turn your world upside down.”

Earlier in the interview, Middleditch directly addressed #MeToo and Time’s Up as a whole, saying he wants to “make sure that all the movements that are really just and worthwhile aren’t sort of dismissed as leftist nonsense.”

“Hollywood lives in its own insular bubble,” he opined. “We tend to think there’s a perpetual importance to things we say… So while we think everything we do is with the greatest importance, I think the rest of America sometimes rolls their eyes, and sometimes I side with them a little bit. I’m not specifically talking about #MeToo, but I would hesitate to guess that there’s a time limit for these various movements where people, even the people that are leaders in the movements, get kind of burnt out. ’Cause at one point you just wanna be like, ‘Well, talk about the movie you’re in as opposed to the statement.’ But I do think it’s super important, as much as there’s growing pains with anything that’s brought into the spotlight, ’cause everybody has to adjust. Hopefully we get to the point where it’s good enough that we can move on. But I mean, it’s noisy at the start, and that’s just what kind of has to happen.”

When the interviewer pointed out that the movements either began or have expanded outside of Hollywood, Middleditch added, “I didn’t mean to marginalize it and say it’s only us. I understand, and it should be a complete global movement.”

Representatives for Middleditch didn’t provide any further comment. Read his full interview at the A.V. Club.