SKIP THE POLITICAL ROLE PLAY
ScarJo: Be actors
At least one actor thinks Hollywood should stay out of politics.
“I don’t think actors have obligations to have a public role in society,” Scarlett Johansson told magazine The Gentlewoman for their spring and summer 2021 issue.
The “Black Widow” star added that she thinks it’s “unfair” to place the expectation on those who don’t want it.
“You didn’t choose to be a politician. You’re an actor,” she said.
Johansson, 36, emphasized that her job was to connect with viewers through her art.
“Your job is to reflect our experience to ourselves. Your job is to be a mirror for an audience, to be able to have an empathetic experience through art. That is what your job is,” she said.
“Whatever my political views are, all that stuff, I feel most successful when people can sit in a theater or at home and disappear into a story or a performance and see pieces of themselves, or are able to connect with themselves through this experience of watching this performance or story or interaction between actors or whatever it is.”
She continued, “They’re affected by it and they’re thinking about it, and they feel something. You know? They have an emotional reaction to it — good, bad, uncomfortable, validating, whatever. That’s my job. The other stuff is not my job.”
Nevertheless, Johansson then went on to discuss her thoughts on the 2020 election, saying that when Joe Biden won the presidency, “You could hear people losing their minds outside, and I just cried.”
She added, “It was a pretty crazy reaction. Oh my God, it’s over. It felt like the end of a war, you know?”
Johansson has been known to get political, backing city Comptroller Scott Stringer’s campaigns, including his current run for mayor, and she’s faced criticism for speaking about her opinion on certain matters, including her pro-Israel stance.
In 2014, she defended her decision to appear in an ad for SodaStream, an Israeli company with a factory situated in a West Bank settlement.
The actress also stood up for Woody Allen, who has been accused by estranged daughter Dylan Farrow of sexual abuse.
“Of course, whatever you say, whether it’s politically correct or not, any statement you make, or how you live your life, people are obviously going to take issue with it,” Johansson said.
“We judge each other all the time. We judge ourselves constantly. I think people equate that connectivity to being self-aware.
“To me, it’s different from being self-aware.”
Holding her iPhone, she added, “And reacting to everything that’s coming at them through this f--king thing, your sense of reality is completely skewed.”