Lea Seydoux covers the May issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK to promote the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die. The film’s release was one of the first ones to be pushed back with the pandemic, but that means that the actors involved had already done loads of print interviews and magazine interviews. Lea clearly spoke to Bazaar weeks (if not months) before the coronavirus took over the newscycle. And as such, the interview seems somewhat… out of touch. I always feel bad about criticizing an actress who is giving an interview in English when English is her second (or third, or fourth) language, because I want to say “maybe something was lost in translation.” Either that, or Lea is really mad that women might consider themselves victims after they were victimized by rapists and predators in the film industry?? You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
On James Bond as sex object: “What we forget is that James Bond is also a sexual object. He’s totally a sexual object. He’s one of the few, maybe one of the only, male characters to be sexualised. I think that women, they love to see Bond, no? To see his body. No? Don’t you think? I love to see sexy men in bathing suits.”
Growing up in a wealthy, well-connected family: As a child she was, she says, “very, very shy. Almost autistic. Almost. I was completely, completely in my own world. I was not connected to people. I was in my own bubble. But at the same time, I was always very aware and conscious of the world. Which is a little of a contradiction.”
She doesn’t think people change: “I’m always playing the same character again and again. The form is different, but the depth is always the same. Interesting, huh?” This also happens to be her theory of human nature. Seydoux believes that people don’t – can’t – change.”I feel that I’m the same as I was when I was a kid. I think there is a mechanism, a way of thinking that will never change. You don’t feel that? I think you evolve, but you don’t change.”
On the essay she wrote about Harvey Weinstein & other film industry predators. “I wanted to say that I don’t victimise myself, that I was aware… I’m not naive, that’s all.” Seydoux is suspicious of the victim mentality that seems to have arisen in the wake of Me Too. “There is a lot of hypocrisy. Because people knew! And they take advantage now to say ‘Yes, I’ve been a victim,’ and they become heroes. Come on! A hero, for me, would forgive.” Forgive the men who have abused their positions, who took advantage of so many women? “So, what? Because they’ve done that they’re done? They’re dead? We need forgiveness, right?”
She’s not politically correct: “There is something about the system that I don’t like. Where you have to fit in a certain way… I don’t want to be where people expect me. I don’t want to be classified… I hate the politically correct. And I hate morality. The judgement. The world has become so polished now, I find it very scary. We’re not allowed to commit any mistakes.”
Men are scared? “I think men are scared. It hasn’t been told yet by men but… I think it’s great that women are speaking out. It’s true that in so many countries, women’s condition is terrible, terrible. And I can understand also that for past generations it was a real struggle. For me, I’ve never felt that I was inferior to men. Never have I thought that I couldn’t do something because I was a woman. But I know that I’m lucky because I live in a country where I’m free and I know that it’s hard in other countries. But I would like this” – she means not just Me Too, but the whole conversation – “to be less openly violent. And we should be able to forgive.”
People should be masculinists too: “It’s good to be a feminist but we should be ‘masculinist’ too. And vice versa. Men should be feminists. We should support each other.”
Why would men ever feel the need to change their behavior when women do the most to convince them that no change is needed? Why be a feminist when women refuse to acknowledge the patriarchy which has been enforced upon them since birth? And all this talk of forgiveness… yeah, Harvey Weinstein didn’t assault me, but I’m still not forgiving him. Before any conversation about forgiveness, shouldn’t there be an acknowledge of what was taken, what was abused, an acknowledgement of the damage? Harvey has never done that. Very few abusers do. So no forgiveness. And this whole thing about “openly violent” – wtf. I hope this was all just Lea not being able to express herself properly in English.
Covers courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar UK.
Just reading the title infuriates me. More proof that celebrities are idiots
Same. Maybe she’s talking so much about forgiveness because she knows she’s going to need it once people read this.
You took the word right out of my mouth… IDIOT!
It was a feeble attempt to seem on a another level…
Nah, she always been up her own backside. She said what she meant and nothing was lost in translation.
Agree. She said all of this with her whole chest.
She’s very peak “I’m not like other girls” and “pick me”.
And she said it over and over and over again. This isn’t one sentence that could be taken in a different context if we translated it back into her primary language. This is paragraphs and paragraphs of anti-woman, misogynist, bullshit.
Exactly. There is no excuse. No translation issues, she’s made it clear multiple times how she really feels. Let’s just let her go live in her own bubble with sexy men in bathing suits and move on. What an insulting interview for so many people.
absolutely. She is gross.
I will say no
She’s totally saying women assaulted by these guys aren’t victims, but knew what they were doing. Gross.
And masculism isn’t a thing; the very idea of being “masculinist” is peak nonsense.
We need to think about the scared men? Um, no. Act right and nobody’s coming for you, guys. The only ones scared are the ones who act like predators and know it.
It’s mind blowing to me how anti-feminists graze the edge of a legitimate point – that we need to consider how patriarchy isn’t healthy for men, either, and stop trying to make female success and modern relationships emulate its shitty, exploitative model – and then proceed to just go flying past it on the wings the ignorance.
Ugh.
Another privileged asshole
Kaiser, don’t feel bad about criticizing her, I’m french and I can assure you that nothing was lost in translation. She’s a stupid, privileged as*hole and this is not the first time she has said something offensive in an interview. She’s basically the french Scarlett Johansson.
So, decent actor, shitty person?
this is the best possible way to describe her.
No
No
Yeah, she is the same in french. She really thinks she is doing something here.
Unless you speak the language very very well, you should probably not try to explain complex social issues with tons of nuance during an interview. But in general I don’t think it’s the language barrier. She’s just spewing half-assed, half-formed ideas that make almost no sense. A hero forgives? Maybe if someone APOLOGIZED, Lea! No. Women don’t need to do all the heavy lifting. People bitch about feminism and metoo but honestly, what else are women supposed to do when men don’t move in the right direction? I haven’t felt a shift at all. Women speak up and that’s great, especially because we all feel less alone I suppose. But it’s a myth that suddenly men have seen the light and are too afraid to leave their house.
Exactly! It’s easier to forgive when the person acknowledges that they’ve done something wrong or done anything at all! These men pretended they didn’t rape/sexually abuse these victims then gaslit them and ruined their careers while they continued on making millions. At least Louis CK, as creepy as he is, admitted to his abuses. Harvey and the like have not.
And I can go with the Christian forgiveness where the person doesn’t apologize but you release the anger and pain for your own mental well being. That I’m good with, but that does not at all mean the perpetrators get to continue onwards to lucrative careers unhindered by their crimes against humanity.
Big thumbs up to both of these comments.
The problem isn’t with her English, which is borderline flawless, like many younger French people.
I can assure you most young french people don’t speak english really well. And their accent is terrible.
So what?
I can also assure you most English native speakers also don’t speak French well and their accent is horrible.
I find that the only people using the term “politically correct” these days are those who aren’t. It’s usually a warning that they’re about to unleash a torrent of sexist, racist, intolerant garbage.
Oh. So she’s stupid.
mais bien sûr
The fact that she said that means that she doesn’t know what feminist means in any language.
I’m sorry but she’s just so bland.
I’m with you, Allergy. Another basic white woman who thinks that she is brilliant and a nuanced thinker because her privilege prevents her from having to confront real world problems. She talks like a young, pretty woman who believes her hype because she is “chosen” by older men, the type who is usually the only woman in the room but doesn’t realize that she was chosen because she fits in a bikini and not because of her brain. If she sticks to the men who prefer women who don’t push back, she will be fine and will never have to deal with the issues most of us confront regularly.
I won’t be supporting her projects. If she’s happens to be in a movie I want to see, I won’t be watching because of her dumb ass.
I never understood why she keeps getting all these roles, she has 0 charisma on screen and her acting is quite bad.
@frenchtoast
Are you french or living in France ?
Léa Seydoux is the absolute nepotism queen of her generation.
She is privilege incarnated.
her two great uncles, grand father and father are all part of the 500 greatest fortunes in France, each on their own. Her mother family is also very rich.both sides are old money and there May be links to aristocracy
her paternal family owns two of the most important french cinema companies (pathe and gaumont if i m not wrong)
that is the real reason to her very successful and totally unearned carreer in theaters.
She was failing her classes in high School, so she tried acting and modelling and miraculously kept getting roles in french and american blockbusters, or great french directors films, in an industry where her family is kingmaker. Without real talent or being insanely beautiful, she is now the fashion world darling.
All this bought luck made this uneducated and Without any sense person think very high of herself, and it shows.
This interview hasn’t been translated in big french women and cinema magazines because her team know she s a mess, and already has scandals about her dumb heiress inepty and unsensitivity . After last Césars ceremony roman polanski fiasco, she stayed mum, as she wants to continue to have access to great roles she s not worthy of.
She is as feminist as Catherine deneuve and Brigitte bardot. 😭
Eh, I doubt Catherine Deneuve was lost in translation at all when she manifested herself against #MeToo. So I will not be giving the benefit of the doubt to Lea. She absolutely knows what she’s doing.
She had a lot of connections in this business, she most likely was protected, unlike the other actresses who came out of nowhere.
But, but won’t someone think of the poor mens???
yet another poster girl for why we shouldn’t listen to celebrities – they live up their own asses.
Oh…my …god. Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva might as well never have existed for this young woman.
I read this thinking she was some 20 year old with little adult life experience, but apparently she’s in her 30s???? Good Lord.
Do yourself a favor and just smile and look pretty, hon.
She’s an idiot. My best guess is that she was referring to women who “consensually” went along with sexual encounters to “get” roles… conveniently forgetting the extreme power dynamics at play and that it’s not uncommon to freeze up and find it hard to escape.
Masculinist? Oh f*ck no. Please STOP. Also, I don’t anyone who liked her character or her acting in Spectre, so I’m not sure why they brought her back in this latest Bond film.
WTF. Masculinist? And no, being shy is NOT the same thing as being on the autism spectrum. They can coexist but you didn’t stop being autistic, you were never diagnosed as such so stop using that to explain your shyness. Holy crap I just can’t with her, can someone please yeet her into the pile of celebrities we never hear from again?
Thank you! I think I am the only person who was chocked by the fact that she comparade of the autism with the timidity. It is was a idiot comparason and I’m always hates people who compare their shy to autism. These are stupidity comparisons made by people who clearly have no idea of autism or even have autistic children.
Thank you. I am autistic and it REALLY bothered by her saying being shy means she was almost autistic
She said so much b.s. that I forgot to criticize that one. As someone who’s being investigated on autism, this kind of mindset makes me wanna throw punches around. And no, I don’t believe she was that shy, it’s common for stupid people to have 2 seconds of embarrassment and say they’re “very shy”.
Dear Lea,
“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” (Quote from longtime feminist writer and editor Marie Shear.)
Please stop talking about a now-centuries-old movement you know nothing about.
When people are vocally against being politically correct, that’s a huge red flag for me. That’s very much coming from right wing politics where it has been a buzzword for a while now.
Agreed.
Being against it means to me that she thinks her right to say something hurtful is more important than the person actually being hurt. Why is it so hard to simply treat others with respect?
All of this.
As a french person : she’s from one of the country’s most wealthy old money families. With aristocratic roots. These people think they are better than averyone else, they think they are the epitome of civilisation. they think they deserve all their privileges. And there are so, so out of touch. She has described herself as a self-made, “i went through the school of life” actress, when her grandpa and uncle owned Pathé and Gaumont, two of the world’s largest film corporations. She’s insufferable.
Thanks, Abby. She’s a basic chick with privilege that will keep her talking like an idiot and who will never need to change.
Damn, Pathé, yeah, I was going to say her class status has to be partially what’s going on here. Wealthy traditionally pretty white lady says what?
She probably never exerienced inappropriate behavior by these creeps in Hollywood because of her family. I will never understand why privileged people can’t see how privileged they really are.
Never heard of her. never want to hear of her again. Bye
In some ways, even modern french people have very out dated ideas about relationships, how to behave properly, etc than we would have thought.
I mean, the whole Catherine Deneuve Metoo thing to me sounded like my mother´s generation : ” So what you have been abused? I have also been abused and survived, so stop complaining. Men are men and they are going to do this shit. ”
It is almost like ” In my time, nobody came in my defense and I have to put up with a lot, so why would I come to your defense?”
This is how the patriarchy gets us time and againg- by normalizing bad behaviour, blaming the victim and popularizing this notion women are ” nagging”, ” complainers” and “victims-
Lea means what she said. That she is obviously confused about the meaning of the words is no big deal. she really believes in old notions like ” implied consent” ( why are this women going to meet him in the hotel room?) and that the victim has to share part of the guilt for the act.
while I agree, as a woman, I have to be careful enough not to get into possibly dangerous situations as a safety measure, I also believe we must fight to live in a world where I should not think twice before crossing a park at 20:00 in the evening to get to the other side because I fear about the men staying up there….and if, <God forbid, something happens, I should not feel intimataded into going to Police and press charges and not be taken seriously.
This is to say Lea has no idea what real life is. She admits herself. She obviously never felt she was at danger, and if she felt that, she probably rationalized she was being " naive", blamed herself and never repeated the experience again.
tbf la Deneuve is over 75 and Seydoux is from one of the most powerful families in the country. Also see Brigitte Bardot who is openly xenophobic and far-right, she’s also from a very bourgeois family. Old money has old ideals. France is made up of a lot of different people and we don’t all think that way. It would be like generalising the crazy trump supporters to the whole of USA
It’s older men and women who do that the most. Hopefully the next generations will stop with the victim blaming.
” ‘So what you have been abused? I have also been abused and survived, so stop complaining’…This is how the patriarchy gets us time and againg- by normalizing bad behaviour, blaming the victim and popularizing this notion women are ‘nagging’, ‘complainers’ and ‘victims.’ ”
+1000, and that may be the only true scary thing about getting older in a patriarchal world that’s actually worthy of shame, whether the subject is misogyny or other problems that have been treated as the natural order of things. Nobody is immune to having to be careful not to be that way though. Girls (and boys) are exposed to that toxic message at every age group, and this is one of the results you can get when that happens.
She’s a bad actress, I mean not horrible but I’ve seen her in Blue is the warmest color and she wasn’t convincing.
She was oatmeal bland in all the 007’s as well. Especially when you compare her to Eva Green and even Bérénice Marlohe who got a much much smaller role, it’s stupefying how she keeps getting bigger roles.
I can’t believe what I just read. As French person, I’m ashamed, as a woman, I’m bloody furious. She is an imbecile. I always tell my pupils for toxic patriarchy to function, you need some stupid women to condone it and those stupid women will also find excuses for men’s behaviour. Here is an example with Léa Seydoux. What she is saying doesn’t even make sense. And you can clearly see that she is from wealthy family. She never had to worry about not having roles or eating, paying her rent. Like we say in French: FERME TA GUEULE!
“I always tell my pupils for toxic patriarchy to function, you need some stupid women to condone it and those stupid women will also find excuses for men’s behaviour. ”
This is true. There was a situation a couple of years ago where a feminist I know of was pointing out some of the more violent dangers of how girls and women are discussed. The way some of the women, but mostly men responded to the facts in her article in the comment section was very telling. There was not a drop of concern for the things that happened to any of those girls. Instead, you had mockery and a bunch of men melting down Brett Kavanaugh style about the things they’re being told not to call women anymore. One guy who seemed really distraught kept bringing up the things his grandmother used to say about women in another decade as an excuse, asking “If she said it, why can’t I?”
Men always have someone else in life reassuring them that their misogyny is no big deal.
I have always had the feeling she is not the brightest bulb around.
This kind of confirm my feeling. That’s all I have.
Yeah she sounds stoopit. But she’s also saying the same things I’ve heard from a number of women, young and old, who ride the fence not wanting to alienate anybody, male or female. If they take a stand, it might just cost a few line items. Which, of course, is also ignorant because waffling costs as well.
Every time I see her, i am instantly irritated. Now I know why. She is stupid. And so high of her to bash the system when you are a product of a system: young, blond, nice ( and blunt) well off actress establishing one self by appearing as a sex object in a Hollywood franchise. A “great” way to rebel!
I never liked her character in the last James Bond movie.
I’m shocked. I was a great fan until… this. She’s not just tone deaf, she’s straight up dumb. D.u.m.b. I bet men love her even more now. Goddamn, I’m disgusted, it’s not just air between her ears, her stance is poisonous. Seriously, I expected a lot from her, don’t know why.
Is this the all lives matter meets feminism movement?
Umm, ok. Lea must be terrified of not being thought of as a “cool girl”. Feminist, just not TOO feminist, you know. So the fragile dudes don’t get scared.
I mean, cannot she open a book? All the bs she is saying can be dismissed by any introduction of any introductory book of introductory feminism.
It reminds me of Marion’s comments too… It’s so disappointing.
She sounds like a sociopath… It’s scary.