Meryl Streep responds to Rose McGowan’s ‘hypocrisy’ tweet

Hollywood veteran Meryl Streep has finally responded to Rose McGowan’s tweet, calling out Streep and other female actors for planning to wear black at the Golden Globes to protest against gender inequality.

On Saturday, McGowan wrote in a now-deleted tweet: “Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @GoldenGlobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.” (Marchesa is the label of fashion designer Georgina Chapman, who was married to Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, accused of sexual harassment and assault.)

In response, Streep’s representative has released a statement. It read: “It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the ’90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others. I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know. I don’t like young women being assaulted...”

Streep also noted that “not every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW (Harvey Weinstein) distributed knew he abused women, or that he harassed Rose in the ’90s, other women before and others after, until they told us.” The three-time Oscar-winning artist concluded by saying: “I am truly sorry she sees me as an adversary, because we are both, together with all the women in our business, standing in defiance of the same implacable foe: a status quo that wants so badly to return to the bad old days, the old ways where women were used, abused and refused entry into the decisionmaking, top levels of the industry.”

Following this explanatory statement from Streep, McGowan has issued an apology on her official Twitter account.