Jessica Chastain Thought Speaking Out Against Sexual Misconduct Would End Her Career
Jessica Chastain said she was surprised she received a Golden Globe nomination for “Molly’s Game” on Monday, because she assumed she would face repercussions for speaking out about the flood recent sexual harassment accusations in Hollywood.
“To be honest, I’m mainly surprised about my nomination. As an actor, I have a lot of fear, thinking that if I speak my mind, or something that feels like it deviates from the norm as a woman, am I going to be made to disappear in my industry?” Chastain said in a recent interview with The New York Times.
“When the article came out about Weinstein, I immediately started tweeting. I’ve got a good group of girlfriends on WhatsApp, and I said, ‘I’m really terrified I’m destroying my career right now. I wonder if people will still see me as an actress, and want to work with knowing I have these opinions,'” she explained. “In the way that only good girlfriends can do, they helped me eliminate fear and understand that the only way to change something that’s wrong is to change it, not ignore it. And rather than saying it’s an industrywide issue, it’s more than that. It’s a society-wide issue. We can’t ignore farmworkers or women who have been invisible.”
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A few days after the New York Times published an exposé detailing sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein that spanned several decades, Chastain took to Twitter to say, “I was warned from the beginning. The stories were everywhere. To deny that is to create an enviornment [sic] for it to happen again.”
She continued to speak out as more Hollywood men, including Kevin Spacey and Brett Ratner, were accused of sexual harassment, even saying a “well-known actor” had advised her to “calm down.”
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“I was tweeting a lot at the time and actually got an email from a well-known actor that said, ‘Calm down,'” Chastain said during an appearance on “The Graham Norton Show.” “I found that heartbreaking and can only think he didn’t understand the movement that was happening.”
Chastain was nominated in the Best Actress in a Drama category for her performance in “Molly’s Game.” The film, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, was also nominated for Best Screenplay.
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