The controversial abortion law in Texas may be starting to impact Hollywood filming in the state.
The Wire creator David Simon announced via Twitter on Monday that he wouldn’t film an upcoming HBO project in Texas as he apparently previously planned due to the new restrictions.
“As an employer, this is beyond politics,” Simon wrote. “I’m turning in scripts next month on an HBO non-fiction miniseries based on events in Texas, but I can’t and won’t ask female cast/crew to forgo civil liberties to film there. What else looks like Dallas/Ft. Worth?”
Simon’s tweet prompted a protest from the Dallas Film & Creative Industries Office (formerly the Dallas Film Commission), which replied, “Laws of a state are not reflective of its entire population. Not bringing a production to Dallas (a big “D”) only serves to further disenfranchise those that live here. We need talent/crew/creatives to stay & vote, not get driven out by inability to make a living.”
To which Simon shot back on Tuesday: “You misunderstand completely. My response is NOT rooted in any debate about political efficacy or the utility of any boycott. My singular responsibility is to securing and maintaining the civil liberties of all those we employ during the course of a production … if even one of our employees requires full control of her own body and choices — and if a law denies this or further criminalizes our attempt to help her exercise that control, we should have filmed elsewhere.”
Simon’s project has not yet been announced, so it’s unclear if it has a greenlight. HBO had no comment on the matter, other than to note Simon is currently working on a limited series about the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police; and likewise had no comment about the status of its upcoming production of a new series, Love and Death, which is slated to film in Austin in the fall.
So far, other Texas-based productions have not announced a change of location, either. The Paramount Network’s Yellowstone prequel Y: 1883 is currently filming as scheduled in the state, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. While The CW had no comment about the upcoming season of Walker, which shoots in the Austin area.
The move follows a Tuesday Washington Post op-ed by actress Uma Thurman where she condemned the new law and shared her “darkest secret”: That she had an abortion in her late teens. “This law is yet another discriminatory tool against those who are economically disadvantaged, and often, indeed, against their partners,” Thurman wrote. “Women and children of wealthy families retain all the choices in the world, and face little risk. I am grief-stricken, as well, that the law pits citizen against citizen, creating new vigilantes who will prey on these disadvantaged women, denying them the choice not to have children they are not equipped to care for, or extinguishing their hopes for the future family they might choose.”
The new Texas law effectively bans abortions roughly six weeks into pregnancy by allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone else who help a woman obtain the procedure. It’s considered the most impactful anti-abortion law passed since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.
Source: Hollywood
