Thandie Newton for Marie Claire Magazine, May 2019
The [Maeve] character’s arc hit close to home for Newton, who is a survivor of sexual abuse. One experience, which occurred when she was 22 and which she’s brought up in interviews over the years, involved an unnamed male director. He filmed her audition, during which he asked her to touch herself intimately—something that she agreed to because there was a female casting director in the room. Years later, when Newton was in her 30s, she discovered the director had kept the audition tape and played it at poker games for other Hollywood insiders. When she began speaking out about this and other far worse abuse she has suffered, she was either ignored or disbelieved. And at the time it may have even cost her work. “I was very aware of the climate of sexual abuse that was going on around me, so I became the person you didn’t want to hire because I would call it out,” she says. “In retrospect, I can see many instances where not only would I not be employed, but other actors and actresses would not necessarily want to be associated with me.” Even people who were supposed to be on her side often told her to sit down.
