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Zoe Kazan is speaking out about sexism in Hollywood.
The actress, who can currently be seen in the indie dramedy The Big Sick, revealed during a recent interview with The Guardian that a producer once asked her an intimate, lewd question concerning oral sex while on set.
“I had a producer ask me on set once if I spat or swallowed. At work,” Kazan said. “He’d say, ‘Oh, it’s a joke, ha ha.’ But he was also paying my cheque and then watching me from the monitor as I made out with another actor – so when he tells me I look good, it feels different. I was in my mid-20s at the time. I was not powerful, I did not feel I could say anything.”
Kazan also spoke about the sexual harassment that still pervades the entertainment industry, and how since there’s no HR department, many actresses don’t speak out for fear of earning a reputation for being difficult.
“I have a lot of girlfriends who are amazing actors, and many times we’ve talked about having to go into a room and give ‘blowjob eyes’. You know, be flirty with a director or a producer,” Kazan continued. “It’s the sense that your sexuality is somehow baked into this situation. Or there’ll be auditions where they’ll say, ‘Wear something body-conscious’ and then you’re aware that they’re checking out your body. You leave the situation feeling not good about what just happened, but you don’t really have the language for why.”
To Kazan’s point, just last month GLOW star Alison Brie opened up about an early-career audition for Entourage in which she was instructed to show up wearing a bikini.
While Kazan says she’s gotten better at shutting down this type of behavior it still has a lasting effect.
“It makes you feel guilty, and bad, as if it’s somehow your fault – that you’re somehow giving that person the signal that it’s OK to treat you that way.”
