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• Casey Affleck went on Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert and spoke about #MeToo.
• The actor has settled sexual harassment lawsuits against him out of court in the past.
• The #MeToo movement is “very, very hard to talk about, and it scares me,” he says.
Despite having been sued twice for sexual harassment, actor Casey Affleck is opening up about his support for the #MeToo movement. In an appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, the Good Will Hunting actor spoke about the movement that kicked off in late 2017 after reports from the New York Times and the New Yorker exposed Harvey Weinstein’s alleged decades-long pattern of sexual abuse and misconduct.
“Who would not be supportive of the #MeToo movement?” Affleck asked rhetorically. “That’s an idea that’s even out there?”
Affleck said that while he finds it “preposterous” that anyone would not be in favor of the movement that pushes for gender equality and a safe workplace, he also said he found it difficult to be vocally supportive of #MeToo. “It is very, very hard to talk about, and it scares me,” he told Shepard.
In 2016, details of two sexual harassment lawsuits resurfaced while Affleck was campaigning for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in Manchester by the Sea.
Two women who worked on Affleck’s 2010 film I’m Still Here filed lawsuits against him. One of the women alleged that the actor had crawled into her bed without her consent while she was asleep. The women alleged that he verbally disparaged them; one also said that he withheld payment, and the other said that he withheld a promised film credit.
Affleck, who’s currently promoting his new #MeToo-inspired film Light of My Life, denied the allegations and threatened to countersue before settling both lawsuits out of court, for $ 2 million and $ 2.25 million, respectively.
Despite the controversy, Affleck ended up winning the Best Actor award in 2017 for Manchester by the Sea. After winning the Oscar in 2017, Affleck opted against appearing at the Academy Awards ceremony to present the Best Actress award, breaking with tradition.
“The way I’m thought of, sometimes, by certain people recently has just been so antithetical to who I really am, that it’s just been frustrating,” Affleck said on the podcast. “Not being able to talk about it has been hard because I really wanted to support all but I felt like the best thing to do was to just be quiet, so that I didn’t seem to be in opposition to something that I really wanted to champion.”