Knightley’s upcoming film highlights battle for equality
Keira Knightley said her new film Misbehaviour, which depicts the true story of how the Women’s Liberation Movement’s disruption of the 1970 Miss World competition, feels relevant at a time when people are still actively fighting for equal treatment.
Knightley, 34, plays a member of the Women’s Liberation Movement, which stormed the stage of the London theatre where the beauty pageant was being held. It was also the year when Miss Grenada, the first black competitor, had taken the crown. The themes of feminism and racism, Knightley said, appealed to her as it had a complete resonance in a world where equality still felt a long way off.
“What I loved about this film was the conversation. It felt so very relevant to what we’re still talking about today,” Knightley said in an interview.
Back in 1970, Miss World was the most-watched TV show on the planet with more than 100 million viewers, meaning the protest created quite a stir. Misbehaviour will also have Greg Kinnear as pageant host Bob Hope, the comedian, and Gugu MbathaRaw as Miss Grenada.
Given the fact that she is raising two daughters, Knightley feels that it has made her even more conscious of women’s rights and related issues like the #MeToo movement which calls out sexual misconduct across the entertainment, politics and business industries.
“With social media...I do completely worry about the kind of images that my daughters are going to be bombarded with,” she shared. But Knightly believes progress has been made and the film pays tribute to the women who helped achieve that.
“I think you have to honour and mark the women that created that great progress before us,” she said. REUTERS