Jessica Chastain Speaks Out on Sexual Harassment in Hollywood

Since last month, Hollywood giants including Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Brett Ratner and Dustin Hoffman have been accused of sexual harassment and assault allegations. Among the growing number of women who have spoken out on the scandals including Jessica Chastain, who spoke out on Twitter regarding the allegations of abuse caused levied against X-Men franchise writer, director, and producer Bryan Singer.

“Let us not forget,” Chastain tweeted on Friday, along with a link to a report that reviewed many of the accusations against Singer.

During the press tour for Molly’s Game, reporters from The Daily Beast asked Chastain about the tweet, which many saw as surprising since she has been cast in Simon Kinberg’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which Singer is executive producing. She explained:

“I’m going to speak my mind about any injustice that I see. I’m not afraid of anything in terms of that. And I think the greatest myth that an industry can create is to make people feel like they’re easily replaceable. I’m not going to allow that into my life.”

In an interview with Screen Rant, Chastain continued by saying:

My current thoughts and feelings are I want to do whatever I can to support victims and to know that I believe them and that there’s a community of artist that are committed to creating safe work environments. And I think that the industry has not been running the way it should be running. I think it goes beyond gender. It goes to all facets of the industry. We need to be more inclusive and um, yeah. So, the thing I am excited about is I do believe that there’s a generation of [artists] who are done with the old ways of Hollywood with the Fatty Arbuckle, Jack Warner, you know, Louie B. Mayer, that kind of old [fashioned] idea of what Hollywood is, and is more interested in creating an industry that is safe and inclusive.

That said, Chastain never said anything directly about Singer. Instead, she remained “simultaneously diplomatic and forthright” and instead chose to praise Kinberg, whom she said was the main reason why she chose to work on the upcoming X-Men movie.

“He wrote this script,” she explained, “and there are many powerful female roles in this story that Simon is telling. And all of my dealings were with Simon and Hutch [Parker, another producer], who were on set.”