Jennifer Lawrence has clarified remarks she made in a video interview with Viola Davis as part of Variety’s Actors on Actors series, in which she said, “I remember when I was doing Hunger Games, nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie, because it wouldn’t work, we were told. Girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead.”
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday, Lawrence said, “That’s certainly not what I meant to say at all. I know that I am not the only woman who has ever led an action film. What I meant to emphasize was how good it feels. And I meant that with Viola — to blow past these old myths that you hear about … about the chatter that you would hear around that kind of thing. But it was my blunder and it came out wrong. I had nerves talking to a living legend.”
In the Variety interview, Davis had shared her excitement about her starring role in Sony’s The Woman King, a film she also produced and which features an ensemble cast of Black women. “When have I ever seen anything like The Woman King?” Davis recalled thinking during the project’s development. “Not just with me in it, but with anyone who looks like me in it?”
Davis continued: “What studio is going to put money behind it? How are they going to be convinced that Black women can lead a global box office?”
Responding to Davis’ skepticism before making The Woman King that a movie like that could ever actually come to fruition, Lawrence said, “I wanna circle back to you being the lead of The Woman King. And we’re at, I think it’s 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes? Sixty-six million domestic. I mean, it is just … It couldn’t have been more wrong. … It just makes me so happy every single time I see a movie come out that just blows through every single one of those beliefs and proves that it is just a lie to keep certain people out of the movies, to keep certain people in the same positions that they’ve always been in. It’s just amazing to watch it happen and watch you at the helm.”
Speaking of the way quotes can be misconstrued or taken out of context by the media, Lawrence told THR: “One time I was quoted saying that Donald Trump was responsible for hurricanes. I felt that one was ridiculous, that it was so stupid I didn’t need to comment. But this one, I was like, ‘I think I want to clarify.’”
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