During the Women’s March over the weekend, actress Scarlett Johansson took a shot at fellow Hollywoodite James Franco over allegations of sexual misconduct made against him.
Without mentioning Franco’s name directly, Johansson alleged that the “Disaster Artist” star was a hypocrite for supporting #MeToo while having skeletons in his closet.
“I want my pin back, by the way,” she said, in reference to Franco wearing a Time’s Up pin at the Golden Globe Awards. “Suddenly I was 19 again and I began to remember all the men who had taken advantage of the fact that I was a young woman who didn’t yet have the tools to say no, or understand the value of my own self-worth.”
The hit at Franco has apparently backfired against the actress. While Johansson certainly has been a vocal advocate of feminism, she has yet to offer any explanation regarding her professional relationship with Woody Allen, not to mention her once appearing to enjoy the company of admitted child rapist Roman Polanski at the 2014 Cesar Film Awards.
Since 1993, Dylan Farrow has maintained that Woody Allen sexually molested her while he was in a relationship with actress Mia Farrow. Allen has emphatically denied the accusation, suggesting that his former partner Mia coached Dylan as part of a vicious custody dispute. The charges were ultimately dismissed by authorities. Moses Farrow, Dylan’s brother, has defended Allen’s innocence while asserting that Mia was the abusive one.
Back in 2014, when allegations against Allen entered the news once again, Johansson publicly defended him, saying that snap judgments should not be made.
“I think it’s irresponsible to take a bunch of actors that will have a Google alert on and to suddenly throw their name into a situation that none of us could possibly knowingly comment on,” Johansson said at the time. “That just feels irresponsible to me.”
“I think he’ll continue to know what he knows about the situation, and I’m sure the other people involved have their own experience with it,” she added. “It’s not like this is somebody that’s been prosecuted and found guilty of something, and you can then go, ‘I don’t support this lifestyle or whatever.’ I mean, it’s all guesswork.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” she went on. “It would be ridiculous for me to make any kind of assumption one way or the other. “
If Johansson believed Allen’s innocence regarding the allegations, she certainly has said nothing in the way of his inappropriate relationship with Sun Yi, who was his partner Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter at the time of entering a relationship with her. None of that stopped Johansson from working on three films with Allen: “Match Point”, “Scoop”, and “Vicky Christina Barcelona”.
Fans were quick to strike at Johansson’s hypocrisy on Twitter:
One fan wrote: “Scarlett Johansson the biggest hypocrite that is there…calls out James Franco yet supports Woody Allen and would hem his pants if she had to…wow!”
“Congrats to Scarlett Johansson for calling out James Franco and the harmful cool girl narrative but you still haven’t denounced Woody Allen and apologized to Dylan Farrow,” wrote another.
Said another: “Scarlett Johansson called out James Franco but how many times did she work with Woody Allen ??? When it’s about money and career, the times up movement disappears very quickly I guess.”
At the same time, news anchor Piers Morgan hit at Johansson for a photo that showed her palling around with Roman Polanski:
2017 did not bode well for the lead actress in the box office. Both films in which she headlined, “Ghost in the Shell” and “Rough Night,” failed to attract audiences and critical acclaim; some of the negativity was self-inflicted. Leading up to the release of “Ghost in the Shell,” Johansson actually said that audiences who disagree with her politics should stay home rather than a buy a ticket.
“If fighting, you know, for women’s rights, for women’s reproductive rights, and you know, in support of Planned Parenthood, if that’s going to, you know, mean that some people don’t want to buy a ticket to see ‘Ghost in the Shell’, then … I’m OK with that,” she told “Good Morning America.”
All of that just indicates how spoiled Hollywoodites have become. In any other industry, if an employee promoting a certain product told consumers to withhold their cash because of ideological disagreements, that person would be fired, and rightfully so.
“Ghost in the Shell” went on to lose $60 million, which may or may not have been lessened if Johansson were a likable star that people wanted to cheer for. Her comments at the Women’s March will do nothing to help her career, which will only be worsened by her past defense of Woody Allen.