Suspicion has dogged Meryl Streep since October as observers contemplate what she knew about Harvey Weinstein’s recently revealed pattern of misconduct and when she knew it. With awards show season around the corner, Streep is now the target of an anonymous street artist’s campaign to underscore her alleged enabling of Weinstein.
Posters appeared around Los Angeles on Tuesday with a black and white photo of Streep standing with Weinstein, her eyes covered with a red banner proclaiming “She knew.” The posters materialized after Streep released a more than 500-word statement to HuffPost on Monday responding to Weinstein accuser Rose McGowan’s charge that she deliberately remained silent in regards to the producer’s conduct.
Street artist takes aim at Meryl Streep with ‘She Knew’ tag around town. pic.twitter.com/UniDauXRlP
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) December 19, 2017
“I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others,” Streep wrote. “I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know. I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening.”
“[N]ot every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW distributed knew he abused women, or that he raped Rose in the 90s, other women before and others after, until they told us,” she emphasized. “We did not know that women’s silence was purchased by him and his enablers.”
Streep’s statement was interesting in that she (a) spoke with some measure of pride about getting her home phone number to McGowan rather than simply calling the actress herself, (b) conceded Hollywood’s “status quo” was a time when “women were used, abused and refused entry into the decision-making, top levels of the industry,” and (c) argued those “top levels” are “where the cover-ups convene.”
If anyone occupies the “top levels” of the entertainment industry, it’s Streep, so that’s an odd argument to make in a statement seeking to absolve herself of any guilt in an alleged cover-up. Nevertheless, there is little concrete evidence implicating Streep personally in the Weinstein cover-up, though it seems likely she (and many others) were at least fully aware of his reputation.
Streep appears to be poised to participate in a widespread protest of harassment in Hollywood, which seems to be what prompted McGowan’s outburst.
Given the reporting of journalists like Ronan Farrow, even if Streep knew something, she was far from alone, and likely not as involved in keeping Weinstein’s conduct out of the press as others.
Because of her status as both one of Hollywood’s most powerful forces and one of the industry’s most outspoken feminists, there really is no light at the end of the tunnel on this one for Streep. These questions will follow her through awards show season and beyond. That’s not to say Streep will never be able to provide a persuasive answer to those questions, but the public’s heightened skepticism of Hollywood’s chief moralizers makes this hurdle a lot tougher for her to clear.
