Cate Blanchett thinks #MeToo “got killed very quickly”
Appearing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Cate Blanchett shared that the #MeToo movement “got killed very quickly” and sexism in the industry is still as alive as ever.
In 2018, Blanchett served as Cannes jury president and used her power to front a woman’s march at the height of the global campaign against sexual abuse, harassment, and rape culture. She was one of 82 women who protested.
This year, Blanchett is just as outspoken about the matter, sharing in a discussion with moderator Didier Allouch, “There are a lot of people with platforms who are able to speak up with relative safety and say this has happened to me, and the so-called average woman on the street is saying #MeToo. Why does that get shut down?”
She added, “What [the movement] revealed is a systemic layer of abuse, not only in this industry but in all industries, and if you don’t identify a problem, you can’t solve the problem.”
As such, from Blanchett’s perspective, the problem persists today: “I’m still on film sets, and I do the headcount every day, and it is still, you know… there’s 10 women, and there’s 75 men every morning.”
She quickly added, “I love men, but what happens is the jokes become the same. You just have to brace yourself slightly, and I’m used to that, but it just gets boring for everybody when you walk into a homogeneous workplace. I think it has an effect on the work.”
In 2018, at the same coveted festival, Blanchett released a bold statement calling out the industry and asking for better: “Women are not a minority in the world, yet the current state of the industry says otherwise,” she said at the time.
At the original, headline-grabbing march, she added, “As women, we all face our own unique challenges, but we stand together on these stairs today as a symbol of our determination and commitment to progress.”
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