Emma Roberts thinks “internet culture” is at fault for the disastrous performance of her film Madame Web.
Roberts, 33, shared her thoughts on the box office disaster in an interview with Variety published on Friday, July 5.
“I personally really loved Madame Web. I really enjoyed the movie. I thought everyone in it was great,” the Space Cadet actress said. “If it wasn’t for internet culture and everything being made into a joke, I think that the reception would’ve been different.”
Roberts added that it “bums [her] out” that “people just make such a joke out of everything now.” She also noted that there is no magic formula for which projects will ultimately be successful.
“Things work; things don’t work. Everyone likes to act like they can predict if they’re going to work or they’re not. And the truth is, you can’t,” she said. “There is no secret. It’s about doing something goodish and it hitting at the right time. Everything else is like a wish and a prayer.”
Madame Web lead actress Dakota Johnson is far less defensive of the project. In an interview with Bustle in March, Roberts’ costar said that the film bombed in part because audiences “will always be able to sniff out bulls–t.”
“You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms. My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not,” the Fifty Shades of Grey alum, 34, said. “It’s not nice to be a part of something that’s ripped to shreds, but I can’t say that I don’t understand.”
Roberts also shared that she was “horrified and shocked” by the alleged misconduct and abuse revealed in the behind-the-scenes children’s television documentary Quiet On Set.
Roberts starred in the Nickelodeon series Unfabulous for three seasons and began working on the show when she was just 13 back in 2004. She said the documentary’s allegations “keep [her] up at night.”
“It made me really, really, really sad that that was happening to people that I literally saw often and had no idea,” Roberts told Variety. “For me, my show, Unfabulous, the showrunner we had was this amazing woman named Sue Rose. I didn’t realize at the time, but a female showrunner back then was not very common.”
She went on, “It makes me really sad, and I just feel like children need to be protected on sets, as do adults, and I feel like we’re working towards a better work environment in that sense.”
