LB: Throughout your career, you have experienced and empathized with moments when women feel powerless.
OW: "You know what has fascinated me the most about all of this? I was on set with some actresses the day after the Harvey Weinstein story broke, and I realized they all had a form of PTSD. They were saying, “Oh, since this thing broke I can’t sleep” or “I’ve been anxious. I just tear up every time I hear another story.” Having done hundreds of stories about child sexual molestation over the years, I recognized it as the same. The women were having the same reaction that children have when they’ve repressed an experience and they didn’t know whom to tell, felt shame, and thought, “I am the only one.”"
LB: How do you see this manifesting into a movement? What comes next?
OW: "It has seared into the consciousness a level of awareness that was not there before. That’s the most important thing to me. When Reese Witherspoon can tell her story at the same time as a farm worker in Iowa or a factory worker in Alabama, it says to a person, “Oh well, I’ve been putting up with that asshole supervisor for all these years. Maybe it’s time for me to do something too.” You can see you’re not alone. We don’t have to turn our heads to pretend something isn’t happening in order to keep going. And now we have amongst ourselves actresses, producers, directors, and people in business discussing how we can create a reporting system so that everybody feels supported. [Cue Time’s Up, a movement and legal fund announced in January, coming to the fore with black-clad actresses bringing female activists to the Golden Globes.]"
LB: And you speak for so many. How do you feel when people say, “Oprah 2020”?
OW: "[Laughs] I actually saw a mug the other day ... I thought it was a cute mug. All you need is a mug and some campaign literature and a T-shirt. I’ve always felt very secure and confident with myself in knowing what I could do and what I could not. And so it’s not something that interests me. I don’t have the DNA for it. Gayle—who knows me as well as I know myself practically—has been calling me regularly and texting me things, like a woman in the airport saying, “When’s Oprah going to run?” So Gayle sends me these things, and then she’ll go, “I know, I know, I know! It wouldn’t be good for you—it would be good for everyone else.” I met with someone the other day who said that they would help me with a campaign. That’s not for me."
Read the full interview at InStyle.
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