Kate Beckinsale posted a video on Instagram in which she detailed a handful of instances where she has suffered harassment and abuse on various sets. The “Underworld” star shared her horror stories in reaction to Blake Lively‘s sexual harassment complaint against her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star Justin Baldoni. Beckinsale said she was “grateful to Lively for highlighting this is not an archaic problem no one is facing. This is continuing.”
via: Too Fab
After her video started getting some attention from followers, many began to speculate about the "drunk" costar. After one fan guessed she was talking about Pearl Harbor costar Ben Affleck, Beckinsale jumped into the comments to set things straight -- calling him one of her supporters on a "toxic" set.
"Ben Affleck protected me on an extremely toxic film set and could not have behaved more respectably," she said, before adding, "I am not going to go into any more specific detail on who it was or wasn't because frankly the most problematic part has actually not been the actors, it has been that reporting a problem or an abuse has resulted in a greater punishment than one could ever imagine."
"That's the point - everybody says why didn't you tell someone well on the whole we have we have told our agents or managers and the head of the studio and this has usually also been witnessed by 30 to 100 people and in one particular incident when the actor was so rough with me that he destroyed part of my costume and ripped my wig in half not to say covered me in bruises, winded me and scared me to death," she further alleged.
"Everybody was incredibly concerned, shut the set down for several hours and was really worried and upset. As soon as I called the head of the studio actually urged by my mother to do so because my instinct was not to .... as soon as I complained about it everything flipped and I was punished, ostracized and could not have wished harder I hadn't said anything which is just, not right [and] the entire reason I made this video in the first place."
In another comment, she also denied she was talking about Colin Farrell, who she starred with in Total Recall.
Kate Beckinsale can't speak directly to Blake Lively's complaint against her It Ends with Us director and costar Justin Baldoni, but the emerging conversation has inspired her to open up about some of her own negative experiences on film sets as a woman.
The actress shared her story in a new Instagram video shared Sunday, where she first made it clear that while she's been following the legal battle developing between Lively and Baldoni, "I've never met either of them and I wasn't on set."
Instead, her takeaway from the story is that it put a spotlight on what she described as "machine effect when a woman complains about something legitimately offensive, upsetting, harmful or whatever in this industry."
She then opened up about some of her own experiences when she's spoken up on film sets, including a time she shared her concerns about an unidentified costar whose constant drinking was impacting the film's production, and her personally.
Beckinsale's On-Set Experiences
"I said, 'I'm finding it very difficult -- my costar is drunk every day and he’s obviously going through something and I have full sympathy for that, but I'm also waiting, as is the whole crew, six hours a day, for him to learn his lines. And it means I'm not getting to see my daughter in the evenings, ever, for the whole movie.'"
As for the reaction, Beckinsale said, "I was referred to, by the end of it, both over the walkie-talkie and to my face as 'that c--t.'" She said she was ultimately given a bicycle to use during her downtime.
Additionally, the Underworld star recalled one time she was put on such a "strict diet-and-exercise program" that she wound up not having two periods.
In another instance, she said she felt "unsafe" during fight sequences "on two different films with two different actors." She claimed that she actually had to go and get MRIs to prove that she was legitimately injured.
The actress said she was further "gaslit and made to feel like I was a problem and blamed and ostracized" for speaking out, as well as "left out of cast dinners, [and] not spoken to as soon as I mentioned there was a problem."
According to Beckinsale, though, the challenges she's faced as a woman in the industry didn't even stop with people she was working alongside on film sets, but extended even to people she'd hired.
"I was forced by a publicist that I was employing to do a photo shoot the day after I had a miscarriage," she said.
Beckinsale said that when she pushed back, saying she didn't want to have to changes clothes for a shoot as she was "bleeding out a miscarriage," she was told, "You'll have to or you'll be sued."
Calling for More Change
The actress noted that this is not an exhaustive list of what she's endured throughout her career, but she is glad to see that not only are times changing when it comes to how women are treated, but women like Lively are standing up for themselves as an inspiration to others to do the same.
"I’m grateful to Blake Lively for highlighting that this is not an archaic problem that no one’s facing," she said in her new video. "This is continuing. And then when it does happen, a machine goes into place to absolutely destroy you. And I'm sure that's the case in other industries as well, and it's just got to stop."
In the caption to her video, Beckinsale added, "Everyone in EVERY industry should be taken seriously and not punished when something egregious happens to them at work."
She went on to explain the extra layer of having it "played out in the public sphere" in her industry, it can have even more far-reaching implications, including destroying "someone’s livelihood, mental health and reputation and that can be very difficult to recover from."
"I’m not trying to say 'wah poor actresses we all have it so difficult,'" Beckinsale wrote, "but I think this is a problem that affects every industry, it's just that it's a little bit more visible in ours."
She called on every industry to stamp out retaliation -- "complaining about abuse should not beget more abuse" -- and for expecting "women who have been harmed, insulted, hurt, shamed or in any other way abused," to just take it as "one of the boys" or face "retribution for having been abused in the first place."
She also said she doesn't want the next generation to face the same things she and her contemporaries did, as they're already having to deal with the increased scrutiny of social media, which can "be weaponized to a literally nuclear level designed to eviscerate."
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