Elizabeth Banks: ‘Don’t want to get an abortion? Don’t get an abortion’

Elizabeth Banks stars in Call Jane, based on the true story of the abortion rights group, the Jane Collective. The Jane Collective operated in America in the 1960s and early 1970s, pre-Roe v. Wade. They were helping women across the country get abortions. Call Jane was in production months before the Dobbs decision came down, ending Roe and ending federal protections on abortions. The film comes out in late October, just before the midterm election. Banks is a longtime reproductive rights advocate and activist, and she’s also an actress, producer and director with some hits and misses. She spoke to the New York Times about Call Jane, abortion, feminism and a lot more. Some highlights:

To be a woman is to be politicized all day, every day: “I don’t want to have to always represent my gender because it politicizes my work in a way that doesn’t acknowledge I’m just trying to make a living. I’m trying to entertain people. I don’t want to deny that my choices feed my personal belief system. What I don’t want to be presented as is some sort of feminist warrior, like, woo-ha, I’m fighting the system all the time.”

‘Call Jane’, post-Dobbs: “I have no idea how people are going to receive the movie. I will say that the Dobbs decision has solidified our commitment to getting audiences to see the movie in the right light, which is to say that there’s maybe a bigger responsibility on the movie that I didn’t feel when we were making it. I don’t want to give it too much import, but we have a midterm election happening right after the movie comes out and, well, my hope is that it invites Republican women voters to go vote. The Democratic women I know, we’ve done all we can do. I want the movie to inspire people to vote out Republicans who don’t support reproductive justice.

The Hollywood liberal: “I study how people live, and I put it into stories. When you do that for your job, you become more open to different people and experiences. I didn’t stay in my small town. Once you get out in the world and get your hands dirty and meet a lot of people, you have to be super [expletive] open to everybody’s perspectives and ideas, and it makes you, frankly, a liberal. The whole point of Hollywood liberals is we don’t want anyone telling anyone else how to live their life. We want you to figure out what’s best for you. That’s how I feel about abortion. You don’t want to get an abortion? Don’t get an abortion.

She can’t solve all of the misogyny in Hollywood: “I am in a rarefied category. There are very few female directors in Hollywood. There are even fewer who are actresses who have become directors. I’ve [expletive] worked my tail off to be able to do what I’m doing. I would love for you to interview the studio heads and the corporations and ask them these questions, because I can’t solve it. I’m putting my head down and showing these big corporations that if they give women the opportunity to do this job, they can make a good product that can make them a profit. It’s a male-dominated industry. It’s a male-dominated world. That’s what I’m up against, but I can’t solve it and I don’t really want to analyze it… I truly feel that it’s dangerous to talk about these things now.

Male journalists don’t understand what actresses go through: “I went to sets for a long time in my career where my ideas were not valued or I didn’t get jobs because I was too “uppity.” That’s the place that I started, and that is the hurdle that I’m still having to overcome. I’m also grateful for all the opportunity and investment that is being made in me. So I like to front that stuff right now.

Banks is telling off the male NYT journalist: “I get myself in trouble. It’s not you; it’s me. I can talk to you all day about feminist issues, but you’re never going to have a deep understanding because it’s not something that happens in your life. I hope that you take something away from this conversation and have a deeper understanding of what women, even rich, self-made powerful women like myself, are up against daily. I hope that resonates for you. But I don’t know that you get it. It’s an intellectual exercise for you, and it’s an emotional exercise for me. It’s the parameters in which I live my life, do my job.

[From The NY Times]

I really love her. I’ve loved her for years, but just sitting here, reading her words as she stands up for herself without apology and tells a male journalist that he’ll never f–king understand the sh-t she goes through is magnificent. She’s right too, not just about her career, not just about acting or reproductive rights, but everything about women. For men, it’s an intellectual exercise. For women, it’s an emotional exercise. And dare I say, an existential exercise. Can we, as women, exist in this society?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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