Aside from her acting, we all know Ellen Pompeo for her abundance of common sense and the way that she gives zero f–ks about speaking her mind.
But some newly resurfaced remarks that she made about Harvey Weinstein’s victims could tarnish that reputation forever.
In July 2018, the Grey’s Anatomy star spoke at an Oxford Union Q&A.
A particular one-minute clip of that shows her expressing some appalling opinions about now-imprisoned rapist Harvey Weinstein and his victims.
“I think we bear some responsibility,” Ellen stated for some reason.
“Not all,” she clarified, before clownishly adding: “But it takes two to tango for sure.”
“That’s not to blame the victim,” Ellen said after blaming the victim.
“That’s just to say… I did go into a room with Harvey Weinstein, I sat at a table with him, I had a probably two and a half hour with him,” she recalled.
“He never said anything inappropriate to me,” Ellen stated, “he never made any sort of physical advance to me.”
It seems that, in Ellen’s mind, this means that she did something right and that his victims must have done something “wrong.”
“I wasn’t in the room alone with him,” Ellen recalled in apparent self-praise.
She detailed: “I had been sent there by an agent in the middle of the daytime.”
“I didn’t think there was anything wrong,” Ellen noted.
She added: “I wouldn’t have gone into that room at night.”
“But he did nothing inappropriate toward me,” Ellen reiterated.
She then claimed: “Now had he, I would have picked up that glass and smashed him across the side of the face with it.”
A lot of folks think that they would just leave, or fight back, or somehow be so much smarter and braver than a predator’s victims.
They think that … until they’re alone and frightened, dealing with a man who might kill them or use the legal system to ruin their lives if they fight.
“So I mean, it’s all what we’re willing to tolerate in our self-esteem,” Ellen opined.
“And what are we going to put up with,” she continued.
“And what,” Ellen added, “are we going to compromise to be liked, to be loved, to be accepted?”
She then rhetorically asked: “How bad do we want to be in show business?”
Instead of quitting while she was behind, Ellen made it worse by talking about how flirty and sexy actresses are.
She expressed that women were “responsible for the signals that we put out.”
Ellen said that women were also culpable “for the messages that we put and the way we present ourselves.”
Fun fact: being pretty, flirty, sexy, or downright naked are not invitations for someone to assault, grope, or even touch you.
“I said in my article and I’m not ashamed to say it,” Ellen unwisely continued.
She said that “as an actor, you certainly, certainly, go into the room with the idea that this director needs to fall in love with me.”
Ellen added that such affection is sometimes necessary “to give me this part.”
“And so, as women, we flirt,” she stated, as if that mattered at all and also as if it were not a glaring indictment of male directors.
“I think we’re aware of our power… especially women… aware of our power of seduction very early on and we use it.” Ellen said.
“It comes in good handy, right?” she asked rhetorically.
“But there has to be a balance in there,” Ellen emphasized. “There has to be a line.”
Again, she repeated: “But I do think we do bear some responsibility.”
To be clear, the context of the clip resurfacing was part of a concerted effort to cancel her.
It was also noted that Ellen Pompeo had, in a 2016 tweet, claimed that white people can experience racism in the United States, which is false.
She then doubled down on her insistence that getting some name calling on Twitter amounted to “reverse racism,” which is not a real thing.
Racism has society, cultural, and structural power behind it. Otherwise, it’s just somebody being rude to you. Those are different things.
While we hope that she has learned since then, Ellen continued to claim that she experienced racism, speaking about it in 2018.
Ignorance like that is not great, but it’s something from which one can learn.
It is alarming, however, considering that Ellen is the mother of three biracial children.
She, of all people, should know better. We are all learning and growing as people, but 2018 was clearly not her year.
