No, The Women on the Hollywood Reporter Actress Roundtable Were Not Stink-Eyeing Scarlett Johansson

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | November 14, 2019 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | November 14, 2019 |

Awards season is now in full swing, which means we’re about to be knee-deep in hot-takes, fake scandals, trash-talking, and very beautiful dresses. OK, it’s like that all year round in Hollywood, but now it’s under the microscope in an even more focused way, so it’s even more exhausting! Yay! One of the newest features of awards season is the roundtable, where actors, directors, producers, and the like sit in a big circle together and get softballs lobbed at them by the trades. It’s a show of goodwill, popularity, and a chance to remind everyone of how good you were in that film you’re campaigning for. With awards season, visibility is key.

The roundtables of The Hollywood Reporter are typically the most-talked-about. This year, the Actress group includes Jennifer Lopez, Lupita Nyong’o, Awkwafina, Laura Dern, Renee Zellweger, and Scarlett Johansson. The latter could land her first-ever Oscar nomination for either Jojo Rabbit or Marriage Story — the latter seems more likely than the former — so, of course, she’s front and center right now. She’s been in the industry for a long time, her work is varied and acclaimed, and she’s a freaking Avenger. 2019 has kind of been her year.

Of course, she’s also constantly putting her mouth in it, be it over her whitewashed casting for Ghost in the Shell, her mealy-mouthed sneering response to being cast as a trans man, or her admission that she’d work with Woody Allen again if he asked. Being candid doesn’t pay off well for her, so I get why people want to see her stumble or be treated as a nuisance in the industry. That may explain why this tweet and variations of it did very well online.

Presented without comment. The faces of the women on this year’s Hollywood Reporter Oscar Actresses roundtable while Scarlet Johansson white womans her way around a rant about being typecast. pic.twitter.com/PqVmYet3Qf

— PilarSuazoVEVO (@Sanniel) November 13, 2019

Oh my god, look at that stink-eye Lupita’s giving! Aww, JLo is going to throw down! Yass queens of vague shade!

No, they’re not sneering at Scarlett Johansson over her discussions of being typecast. Watch the video and you’ll see what they’re reacting to is her discussing what it was like to be typecast as an overtly sexualized woman from her teens onwards and how she had to fight to take control of her own image in a business that loves to reduce women to sex-object status. Everyone is listening very seriously and respectfully because, shock horror, you’re not going to grin your way through a conversation about being sexualized as an adolescent.

Look, I get it. We desperately want more than the professional politeness these a**-kissing events are built to sustain. We truly want to believe this world where everyone vocally calls out bullsh*t when they see it, even if they’re in the highest echelons of celebrity. But come on, can we please stop ascribing entire narratives to people, but especially women, who are just sitting there doing nothing? On top of how skeezy and borderline misogynistic it is to put words and ideas in their mouths, it’s exhausting and utterly benign in the long-term to force political action onto what is essentially a woman not smiling.

Call Scarlett out for the sh*t that actually comes out of her mouth, not the meme friendly wannabe shade you’re projecting onto total strangers. Get your memes elsewhere.