Cate Blanchett: #MeToo ‘got killed very quickly’ in Hollywood

Cate Blanchett said the #MeToo movement was “killed very quickly” in Hollywood during a staged conversation at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, lamenting the rapid loss of momentum for gender equality efforts.

Blanchett, who has been outspoken on gender issues, noted that the tide had turned against the movement despite many people with platforms speaking up safely and ordinary people saying “me too.”

“It got killed very quickly, which I think is interesting,” Blanchett said.

“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, person on the street, is saying me too. Why does that get shut down?”

In 2018, as president of the Cannes jury, Blanchett participated in a red-carpet protest with 81 other women on the steps of the Palais des Festivals, symbolizing the number of female directors selected for the festival’s competition lineup versus 1,866 male directors over the same period.

“I’m still on film sets and I do the headcount every day. There’s 10 women and there’s 75 men every morning,” she said.

“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.”

The year Blanchett presided over the jury, Cannes faced criticism for including only three films directed by women in its 21-film official selection. She defended the festival, saying change was “not going to happen overnight.”

Actress Julianne Moore also addressed gender disparity at Cannes over the weekend, stating that she believes representation has improved in the past decade.

Speaking at a Kering Women in Motion talk on Saturday, Moore recalled being one of two women on a set around 2016. “I can remember being on a set not too long ago where the only women were me and the third AC [assistant camera]. It’s when Hillary Clinton lost the election, and we were both devastated. And I said ‘Look around the room. We’re the only ones here.’ I’ve certainly seen more gender representation in crews. It was unusual, when I was coming up, to see women on a crew.”

On Sunday, Blanchett revealed she will star in director Brady Corbet’s next film, an “X-rated” feature set in the 1970s, alongside Selena Gomez and Michael Fassbender.

This report includes information from the Associated Press.