Kate Winslet slams “borderline abusive” comments regarding ‘Titanic’ ending
Kate Winslet, the star of James Cameron’s hit 1997 drama Titanic, has slammed the criticism surrounding the end of the film and claimed that the polarising floating door scene even led to her being body shamed.
Speaking on a new appearance of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Winslet outlined the “borderline abusive” comments that the press made about her weight following the release of the hit drama. Famously, the movie ends with her character, Rose, surviving the disaster using a door as a raft. However, her lover Jack – played by Leonardo DiCaprio – does not make it. The criticism around the scene concerns whether Jack could have fit on the door with Rose.
“Apparently, I was too fat,” Winslet said when discussing the perceived reason why Rose survived and Jack didn’t. “Why were they [the press] so mean to me? They were so mean. I wasn’t even fucking fat.”
She continued: “I would have said to journalists, I would have responded, I would have said, ‘Don’t you dare treat me like this. I’m a young woman, my body is changing, I’m figuring it out, I’m deeply insecure, I’m terrified, don’t make this any harder than it already is.’ That’s bullying, you know, and actually borderline abusive, I would say.”
Recently, director James Cameron revealed he is making a documentary to put criticism of the film’s ending to bed “once and for all”. The director commissioned a scientific study to prove that it was impossible for both people to fit on the door.
“We have done a scientific study to put this whole thing to rest and drive a stake through its heart once and for all,” Cameron said (via Metro). He and his team enlisted two people with the same body weight as Rose and Jack and put them on a replica of the door whilst undertaking a series of forensic tests.
“We put sensors all over them and inside them, and we put them in ice water, and we tested to see whether they could have survived through a variety of methods, and the answer was, there was no way they both could have survived,” Cameron explained. “Only one could survive.”
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