*Thandie Newton opens up about her Hollywood experience, racism in the industry and being sexually assaulted in a candid new interview with Vulture.
The actress also confessed to not feeling fully accepted by the Black community because she is biracial.
“All these Black people in the public eye who are Black, and you don’t think about their white parents. Like on my Instagram, it’s always my mum. I don’t put my dad up much, and that’s because I want Black people to feel they can trust me and feel safe with me — that I’m not a representative of this Establishment that degrades people of color,” she shared. “All my fu—-g career, I felt like, to Black people, I’m not a legitimate Black person.”
Meanwhile, she has also be dismissed and mistreated by white people.
In the interview, she recalls media outlets referring to her sexual assault as a teenager by director John Duigan as an “affair.”
“What I am evidence of is: You can dismiss a Black person. If you’re a young Black girl and you get raped, in the film business, no one’s going to f—–g care. You can tell whoever the f-ck you want, and they’ll call it an affair,” she said.
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i interviewed thandie newton, who was so incredibly honest and vulnerable. a true gift: https://t.co/I4ccg4V7Ke
— E. Alex Jung (@e_alexjung) July 7, 2020
“Until people start taking this seriously, I can’t fully heal. There are so many problems to feeling disenfranchised. But I keep finding myself alone. There is now an appetite for listening to women, but there’s women and then, right at the bottom of the pile, is women of color. So careful what you do, everybody, because you might find yourself f—-g over a little brown girl at the beginning of a career, when no one knows who she is and no one gives a f-ck. She might turn out to be Thandie Newton winning Emmys.”
Elsewhere in the interview, she explains why she turned down a role in the 2000 blockbuster film “Charlie’s Angels.”
“One of the biggest movies I didn’t end up doing was because the director said to me, ‘I can’t wait for this. The first shot is going to be … You’re going to think it’s like yellow lines down a road, and you pull back and you realize it’s the stitching, because the denim is so tight on your ass it’s going to look like tarmac,” Newton explained.
She continued, “I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t think we’re going to go down this road together.’”
Newtown said a meeting about it with Amy Pascal, who was the head of Sony at the time, didn’t go over too well.
“She’s basically reeling off these stereotypes of how to be more convincing as a Black character.”
She added, “Everything she said, I was like, ‘Nah, I wouldn’t do that.’ She’s like, ‘Yeah, but you’re different. You’re different.’ That was Amy Pascal. That’s not really a surprise, is it? Let’s face it: I didn’t do the movie as a result.”
Pascal released the following statement in response to Newton’s interview, “While I take her words seriously, I have no recollection of the events she describes, nor do any of her representatives who were present at that casting session. I’ve long considered Thandie a friend; I’m thankful that I’ve had the chance to make movies with her; and I hope to work with her again in the future.”
Amy Pascal was fired from Sony in 2015 after leaked emails revealed her racist comments with other execs.
You can read Thandie’s full interview here.
