Late last month, posters emblazoned with an image of Meryl Streep and Harvey Weinstein popped up all over Los Angeles. Streep’s eyes had been covered by a single red line with the words, ‘She knew’.
The posters were created by guerrilla artist Sabo, who said at the time he conceived the campaign as retaliation for Streep using her latest Oscar-tipped film, The Post, to bash Trump. “She’s swiping at us so we’re swiping back,” he told the Guardian. Ergo – he actually had no idea if Streep knew about Weinstein’s sexual misconduct or not.
Streep also came under fire from fellow actress Rose McGowan, who said in a now deleted tweet, “Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @goldenglobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy.”
According to Streep though, she never meant to maintain a silence, telling Tom Hanks via the New York Times, “I found out about [the initial Times report on Weinstein] on a Friday and went home deep into my own life. And then somebody told me that on Morning Joe they were screaming that I haven’t responded yet.
“I really had to think. Because it really underlined my own sense of cluelessness, and also how evil, deeply evil, and duplicitous, a person he was, yet such a champion of really great work.”
She continued, “You make movies. You think you know everything about everybody. So much gossip. You don’t know anything. People are so inscrutable on a certain level. And it’s a shock. Some of my favorite people have been brought down by this, and he’s not one of them.”
When asked what she thought of people asking to hear from her, she responded: “I don’t want to hear about the silence of me, I want to hear about the silence of Melania Trump. I want to hear from her. She has so much that’s valuable to say. And so does Ivanka. I want her to speak now.”
Considering the Trumps’ lackluster record on women’s issues though, we’re betting it’ll be a long time before that happens.
