The lovely Laura Dern is covering Vanity Fair. While reading the interview, I was struck by how vulnerable celebrities are to the journalists who do in depth profiles. Esquire in particular used to just trash their cover subjects. Several writers did that so it must have been an editorial decision. In this case the writer, Sloane Crosley, was gradually won over by Laura, but not before she made some cynical observations about her and at least one ill-advised comment. As Kaiser has pointed out, VF has really taken a turn for the worse since editor Graydon Carter left.

Laura is getting the most press for her comments on #MeToo and how she had some close calls as a teenager in the industry. (The Tale on HBO, in which she stars, tells the story of a woman looking back at a teenage sexual experience and realizing that she was raped by a much older man. This is a real story that happened to the screenwriter, Jennifer Fox, and parallels Laura’s experience as a teen.) So Laura has talked about being sexually assaulted as a teen. In this interview she alluded to her experiences, saying she’d had some close calls. The writer interjected her opinion about it. It came across like judgy garbage frankly, and while Sloan may have thought it was ok to say in context it does not read well. Here’s that part:

“I started making movies as an 11-year-old, so I was on location at 13, which is a different thing. I remember every compromised situation,” she says. “I was a child, and adults took advantage of me or tried, and I justified the behavior as me misunderstanding it.”

This leads to a discussion of the necessity of Time’s Up, #MeToo, and beyond. But as important as all this awareness and change is, from personal safety to equal pay, she’s also aware that the hashtags can put undue pressure on assault survivors to join the chorus. Those who stay silent can feel self-conscious or cowardly. “No one has to speak about their experience,” she says. “It’s also remarkably brave to sit in your own home and look in the mirror and say: this is the truth of what happened. I will tell you I experienced everything barring assault. I mean, there were a million of these circumstances where . . . What director or casting director needs a 13-year-old to go to the Chateau to audition in a room, sitting on a bed beside the director, to read a scene together alone? You just don’t create that scenario. There was behavior that was definitely the worst kind of behavior that somehow I got myself out of or someone stopped it.”

“Or,” I posit, “it happened because you were protected and these men were testing their limits.”

“My dad killed John Wayne,” she quips. “He might kill you, too. The tragedy of my life is that when things were in the gray, I didn’t know they were wrong. I didn’t know I was entitled to say something as simple as ‘I feel a little uncomfortable. Can someone else be in the room?’ or ‘No, I don’t want to come with you to get a book you’re going to give me as a wrap present in your hotel room.’ Or, you know, that ultimate grooming line for young girls . . .”

“What’s that?”

“‘I see you, and I understand you like nobody else does.’”

[From Vanity Fair]

Why did VF leave that line in from the interviewer, about Laura being protected? It can be interpreted as saying her experiences don’t matter or that they weren’t ever going to reach the level of assault. It may have been meant as a harmless observation, but as an editor I would have cut it. I really like what Laura said about how it’s brave to face your own truth, whether you chose to come forward or not. I truly believe that, and not enough people are saying it.

The rest of the interview involves a visit to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, currently under construction and slated to open later this year. Laura is heading up fundraising. I’m so going to visit once it’s open! I just got a bad feeling from the piece, as if someone had an agenda against Laura they couldn’t quite fulfill, because she was perfectly nice and accommodating. Maybe I’m just such a fan that I couldn’t be so objective about her. My only response to someone telling me that they had close calls as a teenager would be to say how awful that must have been.

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Photos credit: Vanity Fair, Getty and Avalon.red