We can thank Meghan Markle for alerting us to a new, corrosive trend in celebrity interviews.
Markle’s 2021 publicity tour proved that being insanely rich, powerful, and privileged doesn’t equal the power of victimhood.The estranged duchess positioned herself as the victim of a racist monarchy, suicidal tendencies, and the weight of a country’s elitist power structure.
The former actress’ Oprah Winfrey interview inspired Spiked Online to call out her victimhood crusade, but Markle is far from alone.
Today’s stars do a variation of Markle’s pose, suggesting that their current fame and fortune barely makes up for the suffering they’ve endured.
It’s a palpable disconnect from the people who made them rich and famous in the first place – the American public. Remember the blowback Gal Gadot and friends received when they warbled “Imagine” from their mansions at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Still, they understand that victimhood status matters in modern Hollywood, and on the Left, so they embrace their pain in the hopes it’ll boost their career status.
And it just might.
Amy Schumer is a perfect example. The far-Left comic enjoys bountiful positive press for her progressive posturing and female empowerment shtick. That’s not enough, apparently. In recent months she’s regaled us with her battle with trichotillomania as a child, and how it left her feeling “ugly and unlovable,” she told shock jock Howard Stern. The problem plagues her to this day, she noted, and she incorporated it into her Hulu series “Life & Beth.”
Minnie Driver has worked steadily in Hollywood since her breakout role in 1995’s “Circle of Friends.” Her hits include “Good Will Hunting” and “GoldenEye,” and she bounces between TV and film work.
She still shared how being called not “hot enough” all but broke her earlier in her career. That came from a “Good Will Hunting” producer she won’t name.
“It was devastating. To be told at 26 that you’re not sexy when you maybe just got over all your teenage angst and started to think, you know, ‘Maybe, in the right light and the right shoes and the right dress, I’m all right.’”
Show business is brutal and looks matter a considerable amount in many projects. Looks, in fact, helped Driver become an internationally recognized star, something she probably won’t complain about anytime soon.
Busy Philipps knows all about working the woke movement to her advantage. She previously attacked Christian actor Chris Pratt on the flimsiest of charges, knowing his faith would make the media take her side.
Philipps also makes sure to portray herself as a victim whenever possible, like this recent exchange regarding her directing gigs. The actress previously helmed an episode of her series, “Cougar Town,” and someone suggested she do the same for another high-profile series.
Then, an executive who she refused to name shot down that possibility.
“The studio won’t approve it, the network won’t approve it. It’s not going to happen,’” Philipps told Insider.
Of course, she alleged that the instance had everything to do with her being a woman. There could be no other reason not to offer her the role. “Meanwhile, obviously any dude who’s spent 10 minutes on a television show manages to parlay their career into directing.”
Jada Pinkett-Smith could use some positive press following her husband’s attack on Chris Rock during the March 27 Oscars ceremony, presumably to protect her honor against a joke. The actress recently revealed a new discovery about herself. She suffers from anxiety.
The first clue? She bit her nails, according to her comments on her “Red Table Talk” showcase. That didn’t get her mother’s full attention, though.
“It was rough,” Smith told guest Ireland Baldwin, 26. “I feel like when I was growing up, [my mother] didn’t understand my anxiety. Because she, growing up, had seen her friends die … she had been through so much stuff that my issues, to her, kind of felt like … [smaller].”
Oscar winner Viola Davis seems to have it all, Hollywood wise. She’s the toast of the town, always in demand and the recipient of fawning celebrity profiles. Except when online critics found fault with her take on Michelle Obama. That prompted Davis to erupt into full victimhood mode.
Davis’ work in Showtime’s “The First Lady” series sent her into a rage, which she shared with the BBC. She acknowledged criticism comes with the job, but she still couldn’t contain her outrage that some found her take on the former First Lady mannered and over the top.
“How do you move on from the hurt, from failure?” the 56-year-old asked. “But you have to. Not everything is going to be an awards-worthy performance.”
“Critics absolutely serve no purpose. And I’m not saying that to be nasty either … They always feel like they’re telling you something that you don’t know. Somehow that you’re living a life that you’re surrounded by people who lie to you and ‘I’m going to be the person that leans in and tells you the truth’. So it gives them an opportunity to be cruel to you … But ultimately I feel like it is my job as a leader to make bold choices. Win or fail it is my duty to do that.”
One way to lead, of course, is to graciously accept criticism.
Megan Fox can thank her God-given looks for some of her early success. Hollywood repeatedly cast her in roles that played up her beauty, like her work in the early “Transformers” films. Now, she not only calls out the alleged misogyny of those earlier experiences, she says critics carped on her work due to sexism.
She said critics of her 2009 horror film “Jennifer’s Body” were wrong to call her character “shallow,” for example, and blames sexism for the weak points that prompted such critique. Fox adds her fellow starlets didn’t even have her back during that period.
“I’ve never felt completely included in the feminist community and I do still think that it’s tricky in an awful way,” Fox said. “Whatever I provoke in them is not something that they can digest very well. And so that comes back on me, as they reject me for those reasons. And I just don’t think that I was a very sympathetic victim.”
Michael Douglas got in on the victimhood act in a recent conversation. The Oscar winner recalled how Debra Winger missed out on co-starring with him in “Romancing the Stone.” The two had dinner with that film’s future director, Robert Zemeckis, and a bit too much alcohol got consumed.
The pair left dinner and Winger reportedly playfully took a bite out of Douglas’ arm. Except she broke the skin, and the son of acting legend Kirk Douglas wasn’t happy about it. And he said so to his director-to-be.
“I break down in tears, ‘I can’t go into the jungle with her, she bit me, look! She bit me in the arm.’”
Joan Jett is the ultimate rock outlaw. She broke gender boundaries with her punk outfit, the Runaways (later, the Blackhearts), in the late 1970s and ‘80s, and now is considered part of rock royalty. Yet a single snub from fellow rocker Ted Nugent sent her into full victim mode. Nugent’s thought crime? He didn’t think Jett belonged in Rolling Stone’s list of Top 100 guitarists of all time.
“Is that his implication,” she asks, “that he should be on the list instead of me? Well, that’s just typical – it’s what I’ve dealt with my whole life, being written off. Ted Nugent has to live with being Ted Nugent. He has to be in that body, so that’s punishment enough.”
The scribe at NME ate it up, of course. That’s another reason the victim mewling is served up so often. Modern journalists are eager to wave the Victim Card, too.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.