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Kate Winslet LA Times Allen stinkeye.jpg

You're Not Winning An Oscar This Year, Kate Winslet, You Can Stop Sucking Up To Woody Allen Now

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | December 18, 2017 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | December 18, 2017 |


Awards season makes some people desperate, but I actually appreciate a bit of obvious hunger for the victory. It’s so boring and disingenuous to see these figures spend months campaigning for an Oscar while consistently insisting that they really don’t care if they win or not. Yes you do, just own it. Go full Melissa Leo and wear that badge with pride. I’ve always kind of dug that Kate Winslet is someone who is incredibly open about liking winning. She works hard, she campaigns hard and she’ll happily tell you she still enjoys winning awards. I remember an interview where she instantly remembered where she stood on the EGOT ranks (she doesn’t have a Tony) and loving it.

But seriously, Kate, you need to stop campaigning for Wonder Wheel now. It’s not happening.

Watching Winslet go full-throttle in her Oscar campaign for the Woody Allen movie has been a combination of sad and aggravating. She has an Oscar and six more nominations, a Grammy, three Baftas, an Emmy, a CBE, and all that sweet sweet James Cameron money. She doesn’t need to do this anymore, and yet there she is, on every chat show and every awards campaigning vehicle - be it round-tables or spotlight covers - effusing the praises of Woody Allen, a man accused of raping his own daughter, Dylan Farrow. As the post-Weinstein #MeToo movement grew to levels unimagined, encompassing every facet of the industry and toppling king-makers, Farrow herself wrote an op-ed for the L.A. Times, calling out Hollywood’s hypocrisy regarding Allen’s power. Amidst genuine change in an industry previously immune to it, it was notable that Allen remained the guy everyone quietly excused. Farrow called out Winslet by name.

That hasn’t stopped Winslet from being one of the few major names in the business still screaming Allen’s name in praise from the roof-tops, continuing to do so even when the temperature in the room tells her it would be a bad idea to do so. When she was asked about Farrow, Winslet responded, ‘I didn’t know Woody and I don’t know anything about that family. As the actor in the film, you just have to step away and say, I don’t know anything, really, and whether any of it is true or false. Having thought it all through, you put it to one side and just work with the person. Woody Allen is an incredible director.’

Then there was the weird time she said, ‘I think on some level Woody [Allen] is a woman.’

Last week, the L.A. Times released their best actress contenders roundtable, featuring Winslet alongside women like Margot Robbie, Saoirse Ronan and Jessica Chastain, the latter of whom has been very vocal in her belief of Farrow and refusal to work with Allen. Winslet, as expected, starts raving about Allen:


Woody Allen is an extraordinary writer and he’s obviously known for having created extraordinary roles, very powerful, complicated roles for women for many, many, many years and to join that lineage of incredible actresses made me feel terrified and also immensely privileged, and it was a responsibility as well.


As demonstrated by this tweet, the other actresses’ faces at this moment speaks volumes.




‘Stinkeye’ barely covers it.

But here’s the thing: That moment is really meme-worthy and expresses the kind of silent catharsis a lot of us - particularly women - must find in keeping our mouths shut but letting our emotions be fully known, yet it’s emblematic of the problems that got Hollywood here in the first place. The L.A. Times still had her on the panel to discuss it, the moderator still asks her benign and soft-ball questions about the film and her work as if Woody Allen is just another director, and the other women still stay silent. Nobody calls her out or talks about Dylan Farrow or how hypocritical it is for Winslet, who also worked with Roman Polanski, to call out Weinstein in the same month she’s plugging a Woody Allen movie. It would clearly be too rude to call her out, too gauche for such a polite work situation, but surely that’s what we need right now? We need to stand up not just for Dylan Farrow but for every abuse victim whose experiences were considered moot in the face of winning a gold statue.

So yeah, fuck Kate Winslet and fuck the industry that’s allowing her to keep doing this charade as if it’s just another day at the office.