Meryl Streep was misunderstood. The Oscar-winning actress came under fire last week after her comments at the Berlinale Film Festival were misconstrued. During a press conference on Thursday, February 11, Streep – who was president of the festival’s jury — addressed a reporter’s question about the lack of black people on the jury, as well as a question about cultural films and Africa, and her answers were taken out of context.
“Did you notice that there are no black people on the jury at all? There’s not one black person and no people of color. That has been the case for five years. What’s your opinion on that?” one reporter originally asked jury member Lars Eidinger. Streep weighed in on the issue later while answering another reporter’s question about the festival’s strong representation of female actors and directors.
“Well, I’m very committed to equality and inclusion of people of all genders, races, ethnicities, religions; there should be inclusion, and this jury is evidence that at least women are included – and in fact dominate – in this jury, and that’s an unusual situation in bodies of people who make decisions, so I think that the Berlinale is ahead of the game,” Streep explained.
The topic of the jury’s diversity was then seemingly dropped. After some time, another reporter posed a question about films from different countries. Streep’s subsequent answer was later incorrectly associated with the previous question about diversity.
“There is a film that is representing Tunisia and the Arab world and Africa in the main competition. How do you see this part of the world, and is it easy for you to understand that culture, and are you following any Arab movies?” an Egyptian reporter asked the Ricki and the Flash actress.
“Yes, in fact I’ve just seen a film called Theeb, which I loved. I saw Timbuktu recently, but I don’t know very much about the Middle East, and yet I’ve played a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures,” Streep replied, before explaining, “The thing that I’ve noticed is that there is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture. And, after all, we’re all from Africa originally; we’re all Berliners, we’re all Africans, really. We have a critic on our jury, we have a director on our jury, we have actors on our jury, a photographer, cinematographer; people will be looking at different things in these films, but we’re human beings, and film is an emotional experience. We’re going to make these decisions based on what our head wants to say, but we’re first attacked in the heart.”
After the press conference — and amid the Oscars drama — her answers got mixed up in the conversation about the lack of diversity in Hollywood. One Twitter user wrote, “It seems like she’s saying ‘oh, well we’re all from Africa, so the lack of diversity on the jury doesn’t matter.’ How condescending.” But, as Awards Daily pointed out, Streep was in fact addressing an entirely different question.
