Hollywood Heavyweights On Harvey

By MiNDFOOD

Hollywood Heavyweights On Harvey
MiNDFOOD spoke exclusively to Justin Timberlake, Chris Hemsworth, Matt Damon and Woody Allen about Harvey Weinstein's abusive behaviour.

Mindfood speaks to some of Hollywood’s biggest male stars about the Harvey Weinstein scandal:

Justin Timberlake

“I’m an only child raised by his mother so I am extremely sensitive to women because I love my mum so much. Obviously, everything that you’ve heard in the last week, is sad. I hope that it gives a lot of women the courage to step up. And right away. I think that’s the part of the discussion that should probably be brought up more is that, not only people, men and women alike, but women I think moreso are preyed upon and don’t feel like they can bring it up. I’ve never encountered anything like that in my life.

I don’t feel that I’ve ever had anyone of the opposite sex or the same sex try to take advantage of me. But I know how I would feel. I think about my mother and my wife. If I were to have a daughter one day, I don’t know how I would feel about that. And you aren’t from Tennessee but it would be unfortunate to bring the Tennessee back out of me. (laughs) Literally, I think this is a serious, serious matter and I don’t want to make a joke of it. I really hope that it does inspire a lot of people, any minority who’s been preyed upon in this way, to speak up and feel confident that they can speak up. There’s an energy around it where I feel like, is automatically empowering a lot of women. That is at least for me, what I feel like is silver lining to this situation.”

Chris Hemsworth

“Fortunately, I haven’t had that experience and my heart goes out to anyone who has suffered through that. It’s much tougher for women, or it’s far more the case with women being taken advantage of than there is with men. But I am sure there are men who have been in that situation as well.”

Matt Damon

“Situations like we’ve been reading about in the news with Harvey, I don’t know how you protect somebody from that. A lot of these women did everything right. They were pursuing their careers, they were doing everything professionally and wound up in these situations where they got pulled into a meeting that seemed completely on the up and up and then suddenly they were trapped in a room with a monster. That’s a fear, I think, for any parent, or brother or friend of any woman. That is the nightmare scenario. I think that day to day you just try to instill your kids with a sense of self-esteem because you’re not going to be there when they are making a lot of these choices in their lives. And you want them to be able to make good choices. But again a situation like that is the worst case scenario.

There was a number of times I thought [Trump’s] candidacy would be derailed. The “grab them by the pussy” comments… You are admitting that you are a sexual predator. I don’t know how to raise children in the face of that kind of boorishness coming out of the White House. Hopefully this is like a series of dominoes that will fall and we will get to the point where the waitress who is getting harassed while she’s punching her time card fills in embolden enough to speak out as well without fear of retribution.

I am hoping that the world that I’m raising these girls to come into will be one in which you have a lot more women in positions of power and hopefully that will happen before my kids are adults, but if it doesn’t then my kids will be the wave that puts women in power. We just need more women in these positions of power. I have a good feeling that they would use that power quite differently. It’s definitely not just a Hollywood problem. It’s a problem across all different sectors and all different businesses. It’s a problem across a culture and it looks like we are waking up to it and getting ready to take it head on which is long overdue.”

Woody Allen

“I think the whole Harvey Weinstein thing is very sad for everybody involved. Tragic for the poor women that were involved, sad for Harvey that his life is so messed up, and I think the reportage on him has been good from the Times and the New Yorker, but that whole situation is very, very sad for everybody. There are no winners. It’s just very, very sad and tragic for those poor women that had to go through that.”

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