Evangeline Lilly said she considered posting photos of herself at an anti-vaccination rally knowing it would be controversial, but that Marvel took the position that “it’s not It’s not up to us to tell you how to live your life”.
In an interview with Squire released Friday, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania The star opened up about her conflicted relationship with Hollywood, including feelings amid #MeToo that she ‘became misogynistic to survive misogyny’, why she never ‘felt more alone in Hollywood than I do now and his life – and career – endeavors beyond carpets and movie sets.
She also opened up about the controversy surrounding her attendance at an anti-vaccination mandate rally in January 2022 and in post in March 2020 at the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the post, she used the hashtag #businessasusual to describe her life and that of her family at the start of a global public health crisis, which has since killed 6.8 million people, including 64,000 in the last 28 days, according to the WHO. .
Addressing the 2022 post, Lilly told the magazine that she had wondered whether to post it “about 600 times”, knowing it could elicit backlash. “I know the beast I’m attacking,” she remembers thinking. “I know I got a little pebble and there’s this fucking giant Goliath. If I shoot this pebble, it will wake the giant.
But the Marvel actress reiterated a similar message from her Instagram post, telling Squire that “I just wanted people who were struggling because they were under a lot of pressure to do something they didn’t want to do to know that they weren’t alone, to know that there were people who actually felt they had the right to say no,” she said.
In her post last year, Lilly said her attendance at the rally — the same event that anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made headlines by comparing vaccination mandates to the Holocaust — was in favor of “body sovereignty” as someone who was “pro-choice before COVID and I’m still pro-choice today.”
“I believe that no one should ever be forced to inject anything into their body, against their will, under threat of violent attack, arrest or detention without trial, loss employment, homelessness, starvation, loss of education, alienation of loved ones, excommunication from society…under any threat,” wrote she at the time. “It’s not the right path. It’s not safe. It’s not healthy. It’s not love. I understand that the world is afraid, but I don’t believe responding to fear with force will solve our problems.
But the Marvel actress took a different stance on her March 16, 2020 Instagram post, in which she captioned a tea party photo, “I just dropped my kids off at gym camp. They all washed their hands before entering. They are playing and laughing. #businessasusual. This message, the actress finally issued a lengthy apology almost two weeks later.
“I didn’t expect anyone to pay attention to it because no one ever pays attention to what I post,” she said of her reasoning behind the original post and her apology. . “I ended up having enough people saying to me, ‘Well, there’s a lot of people dying right now, and that could have been really insensitive to what they’re going through,’ and that resonated for Me.”
In a separate interview for the Happy Sad Confused Podcast, which comes in the middle of the press tour for the release of the third The ant Man movie, Lilly went into more detail about the response to her posts and how her public policy stances were taken by Marvel.
When asked if Marvel President Kevin Feige had ever asked him to delete his personal messages, Lilly replied – even in cases of “direct conversations with them that I initiated” – the answer was No.
“They always said, ‘It’s none of our business. It’s not for us to tell you how to live your life or what opinions to have,” she said. “I think it’s really healthy. I think there has to be a separation between your professional life and your personal life.
The actress added that amid the controversy around her comments, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania director Peyton Reed told her she shouldn’t worry about rumors about her future with Marvel.
“In fact, I even got a very encouraging phone call from Peyton Reed at one point simply saying, ‘Just so you know, there are rumors going around that Marvel is abandoning you or cancels, and it’s not from Marvel, and it’s not from us. So ignore that,” she recalled.
Marvel actor Chris Evans previously said The Hollywood Reporter that neither Kevin Feige nor Marvel told him to minimize his political speech. “On the contrary, when I come across Kevin Feige, the first thing that comes out of his mouth is ‘Man, I love what you’re doing (on Twitter),'” he explained.
“I don’t see it as garbage,” Feige said. THR. “I see him as very shrewd, very honorable, very noble, very Cap-like. Commentary and questions. I said to him: ‘You merge! You and the character merge!”
At the time, Evans added that when it came to expressing his political views, he didn’t want to “alienate” half of his audience. “But I would be disappointed in myself if I didn’t speak up,” he added. “Mostly out of fear of monetary repercussions or damage to my career, this seems really disgusting to me.”
Lilly shared a similar sentiment about why she’s been so open about her stance on vaccinations. “My authenticity is going to piss off some people and it’s not always going to make me friends or make me popular,” she said. “But that’s all I have left.”