The Crown star Vanessa Kirby has spoken about the “overnight difference” made by the MeToo movement.
The 32-year-old was recently nominated for a leading actress Bafta for her role in Netflix drama Pieces Of A Woman, about stillbirth.
Speaking on the Make It Reign podcast, hosted by Josh Smith, she said: “I noticed there was an overnight difference when the MeToo movement was founded, and the Weinstein thing happened.
“There was a difference in how people spoke to me or awareness around it. And now with Pieces Of A Woman, I know it wouldn’t have got made.
“This is my first lead and they took a risk on an actress, holding a movie about a woman losing a baby was like unthinkable a few years ago.”
Film producer Harvey Weinstein was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood before his downfall in October 2017 ignited the MeToo movement.
Multiple women came forward to the New York Times and New Yorker to accuse Weinstein of sexual assault and inappropriate behaviour, triggering a wider reckoning for men accused of abuse.
Kirby, who won critical acclaim for her role as Princess Margaret in royal series The Crown, also has a leading actress Oscar nomination for Pieces Of A Woman, in which she stars alongside Shia LaBeouf.
She said of preparing for the role that she “had a privilege to spend a lot of time with different mothers, who’ve lost babies and sort of be witness to that, their stories and how they came to terms with it”.
“There’s just so much silence around it that they feel like they haven’t really been able to speak about it, and when I learned really early on that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s 25%.’
“And yet the amount we talk about it is like 0.01%. I hope that will change.”
She told the podcast she has founded her own production company to champion female-led stories.
Kirby said: “There’s just so much work to do and I’m just setting up my own production company. I’ve always wanted to do it and I know now I’m ready.
“I know that it’s a very small part of a very big industry, to represent a female experience on screen.
“I just feel like my part is to create, find and represent things on screen that, as a public collective consciousness, maybe we haven’t seen before and we haven’t seen because it’s been an incredibly male industry.”
Weinstein has launched an appeal against convictions for rape and sexual assault after he was sentenced to 23 years in prison. He claims any sexual activity was consensual.
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