Sorvino urges focus in fighting abuse
PASADENA, Calif. – Mira Sorvino was among the first accusers of Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul who blacklisted her from future roles for resisting his advances. Her father, actor Paul Sorvino, recently said he’d have killed Weinstein if he’d known of the advances before The New Yorker reported them.
And Wednesday, in an open letter at HuffPost to Woody Allen’s daughter, Dylan Farrow, Sorvino apologized for minimizing Dylan’s abuse allegations against the director as “an outgrowth of a twisted custody battle.” She said she was a “naïve young actress” when she appeared in Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite, for which she won an Oscar in 1996.
So the outspoken actress, a star of Condor, an upcoming series on AT&T’s Audience Network, told the Television Critics Association Thursday she’s “very excited that this movement of #MeToo and Time’s Up is taking place, not only for myself but for my daughters, so they don’t have to suffer from what I (suffered). But I think it all requires grave consideration and thought, it’s not a snap to judgment thing.
“I think it’s a really wonderful, awakening time for all of us as moral human beings to say no one should ever be abused in their workplace, in their home, harassed. Obviously, sexual politics have no place in power dynamics. Our lives have to become more equitable.”
But she cautioned against making too sharp a pivot to pay disparities and wider gender issues.
“We have to stay focused on harassment and abuse issues rather than sort of (shift) in favor of a very general women’s movement. It’s important to work for parity and equal pay, but we cannot leave voices of victims behind.”
As for her own future, Sorvino said after the panel that she’s begun seeing more opportunities come her way.
“Since those revelations came out, there seems to be a lot of goodwill toward me in the entertainment business,
and I’m getting offers and already have done this really great recurring role on Modern Family, which is just a delight, and am going into some projects that will be announced in a few days.”
‘BARRY’
In HBO’s Barry (due March 25), comedian and former Saturday Night
Live star Bill Hader plays a hitman, frustrated with this career, who stumbles into an acting class while pursuing his latest victim.
Bitten with the theater bug, he puts himself under the tutelage of a teacher (Henry Winkler) who’s unaware of Barry’s day job. But Barry’s boss (Stephen Root) is unwilling to let him go, and Barry has a ways to go to become a passable actor.
“He’s good at killing people,” Hader says. And Barry explores “this idea that the thing you’re really good at is destroying you ... and the thing you want to be good at, you’re terrible at,” even if it provides “some personal calm” and a kinship with a community of would-be actors.
Hader says that struggle echoes his time on SNL: “I did an OK job with the sketch stuff, but the live television aspect was always hard for me. I had a lot of anxiety, and the whole time I was on that show” was a struggle.
Well before that, Hader, 39, got his Hollywood start as a production assistant on movies including Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Collateral Damage.
The eight-episode series was created and written by Hader and Alec Berg ( Silicon Valley, Curb Your Enthusi
asm). Hader directs several episodes, and doesn’t shy away from violence, which is surprisingly realistic.
The appeal? “People who want something and are trying to get it and desperately need it are interesting to watch,” says Berg. “He’s literally killing people and wants to change,” even if doing so could get him killed. But “ideally the audience is rooting for him to fulfill that dream.”