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Actress Ayo Edebiri found herself in the middle of an awkward conversation at a press conference recently. She’s starring in a new film, After the Hunt, alongside Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield, where Edebiri and Roberts’ characters go head-to-head as a student and professor at an elite college.
The three actors were doing press at the Venice Film Festival. Given that the film’s subject matter references the #MeToo movement, Italian reporter Federica Polidoro asked Roberts and Garfield about the impact of those movements.
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“What [have] we lost in the politically correct era?” she first asked, then qualified the question with, “What [do] we have to expect in Hollywood after the Me Too movement and Black Lives Matter are done?”
The thing is, she ONLY asked the white actors. Garfield and Roberts appeared momentarily confused by the reporter excluding Edebiri and asked her to repeat her question, which she did, specifying that she wanted answers only from Roberts and Garfield.
Though she wasn’t asked to address the issue, Edebiri jumped in, saying, “Yeah, I know that that’s not for me, and I don’t know if it’s purposeful if it’s not me, but I just am curious. I don’t think it’s done, I don’t think it’s done at all. I think maybe hashtags might not be used as much, but I do think that there’s work being done by activists, by people, every day, that’s beautiful, important work that’s not finished, that’s really, really, really active – for a reason, because this world is really charged. And that work isn’t finished at all,” she concluded.
As you might imagine, Polidoro, who is listed on her Instagram account as a ‘film journalist,’ and contributor to American outlets Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, and Italian publications, L’Espresso, Il Foglio, and Cineuropa, was inundated with hundreds of comments on her social media accounts questioning why she excluded the only Black person in the interview. She responded in an Instagram post.
“I would like to clarify that, rather than focusing on the thoughtful responses of Ayo Edebiri, Julia Roberts, and Andrew Garfield, the discussion continues solely on how I should have phrased the question,” Polidoro wrote. “All the contributions from those present were reported in full in the published interview, without any omissions.”
She added, “To date, I am not aware of any protocol that dictates the order in which questions must be asked in an interview. Censoring or delegitimizing questions considered ‘uncomfortable’ does not fall within the practice of democracy. Only the Journalists’ Association is authorized to evaluate the work of professionals in the field, not social media tribunals. To those who unjustly accuse me of racism, I would like to clarify that in my work I have interviewed people of every background and ethnicity, and my own family is multi-ethnic, matriarchal, and feminist, with a significant history of immigration.”
After the Hunt, directed by acclaimed Italian director Luca Guadagnino, comes out in theaters on Oct. 10.
See social media’s reaction to Edebiri’s response below.
