In a new interview, Scarlett Johansson acknowledges she has courted controversy, mostly by the impolitic way she has defended her choices to star in movies that were criticized for their depictions of people who have long been marginalized by Hollywood.
“Yeah, I’ve made a career out of (controversy),” the “Black Widow” star said an interview with the U.K. publication The Gentlewoman. Johansson, 36, also remains one of the few remaining stars to continue to support Woody Allen.
While Johansson said she’s going to express her opinions, “because that’s who I am,” she also admitted she hasn’t always expressed herself in the best way possible.
“I mean, everyone has a hard time admitting when they’re wrong about stuff, and for all of that to come out publicly, it can be embarrassing,” Johansson told The Gentlewoman. “To have the experience of, ‘Wow, I was really off mark there, or I wasn’t looking at the big picture, or I was inconsiderate.’ I’m also a person.”
Johansson embarrassed herself when she became one of the more prominent examples of Hollywood’s long history of whitewashing with her leading role in “Ghost in the Shell.” In the 2017 action film, based on a Japanese manga, she played a Major, a machinate body housing the brain of a dead Japanese woman. Fans of the original manga and advocates for Asian actors in Hollywood argued that a Japanese actress should have been cast in the role.
Johansson tried to defend playing Major by essentially saying her character was race-less. “I would never attempt to play a person of a different race, obviously,” Johansson said. The film ended up bombing at the box office, pulling in only $20 million its first weekend on a $110 budget. To observers, the movie’s weak showing was yet another sign that whitewashing — the casting of white performers in Asian roles — had become socially inappropriate and bad for the bottom line.
Johansson stirred more controversy in 2018 for another socially inappropriate move. She faced criticism in the LGBTQ community for being cast in “Rub and Tug,” playing a real-life trans man who ran an empire of massage parlors in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the 1970s.
Unfortunately, Johansson responded to the criticism in a way that came off as arrogant. She also sounded ignorant of the way in which audiences had begun to lose their taste for even acclaimed cisgender actors, such as Oscar winner Jared Leto, Emmy winner Jeffrey Tambor and Oscar nominee Felicity Huffman, playing transgender women in “Dallas Buyers Club,” Transparent” and “Transamerica,” respectively. At the time, Johansson said via her representative: “Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment.”
Johansson eventually backed out of “Rub and Tug,” acknowledging her insensitivity. In a statement, she said: “Our cultural understanding of transgender people continues to advance, and I’ve learned a lot from the community since making my first statement about my casting and realize it was insensitive. I have great admiration and love for the trans community and am grateful that the conversation regarding inclusivity in Hollywood continues.”
Johansson, however, hasn’t backed down from her support for Woody Allen, at least not publicly. Allen has long faced allegations that he molested his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow when she was 2 years old. These 1992 allegations were revisited in a recent HBO documentary “Allen v. Farrow.”
Johansson told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019: “I love Woody. I believe him, and I would work with him anytime.” Johansson was Allen’s muse in the mid-2000s as the star of “Scoop,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and “Match Point,” for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination.
Johansson’s statement brought condemnation from Dylan Farrow, who tweeted that the actress’ support for Allen didn’t square with her support for the Times Up movement. The Times Up and “MeToo movements were sparked by reporting on widespread sexual abuse and harassment committed by Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men in Hollywood.
“Scarlett has a long way to go in understanding the issue she claims to champion,” Dylan Farrow tweeted.
Johansson didn’t address her support for Allen or the specifics of other complaints against her in her interview with The Gentlewoman. She only said she’s been trying to learn when to say things and when not to — “recognizing when it’s not your turn to speak.”
“I can be reactive,” admitted Johansson, who is married to “Saturday Night Live” star Colin Jost. “I can be impatient. That doesn’t mix that great with self-awareness.”
But she also pushed back at the idea that being a famous actress carried additional political and social responsibilities.
“Some people want to (have a public role in society),” Johansson said. “The idea that you’re obligated because you’re in the public eye is unfair. You didn’t choose to be a politician, you’re an actor. Whatever my political views are, all that stuff, I feel most successful when people can sit in a theatre or at home and disappear into a story or a performance and see pieces of themselves. …That’s my job. The other stuff is not my job.”
