politics

Scarlett Johansson Called Ivanka Trump a Coward

Scarlett Johansson with Arianna Huffington at the Women in the World Summit. Photo: ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images

Speaking with Ariana Huffington today at Tina Brown’s Women in the World Summit, actress-activist Scarlett Johansson reacted to Ivanka Trump’s recent interview with Gayle King, in which the first daughter was asked about whether or not she was complicit in her father’s actions. Johansson said she found the interview “cowardly” and “baffling,” and stood by her SNL perfume thesis. “You can’t have it both ways, right?” she said. “If you take a job as a public advocate then you must advocate publicly, right?”

[Ivanka] said … she felt that the greatest change, the biggest influence that she would have, the change that she would make, actually would be behind closed doors, and nobody would actually know that she had made this change. And I thought, well that’s empowering! How old-fashioned, you know, this idea that behind a great man is a great woman. What about being in front of that person or next to them? It is such an old-fashioned concept that to be this powerful woman, you know, you can’t appear to be concerned, that someone is going to think that you are bitchy, or a powerful woman, you know, they get concerned with this idea that they are going to be seen in this unforgiving light and, you know, screw that, it is so old fashioned and it is so uninspired and actually really cowardly.

The actress acknowledged it’d be pretty weird to be Donald Trump’s daughter right now and have your husband in charge of things like foreign policy in the Middle East.

I can’t imagine how complicated it must be to see your parent in this sudden position that he is in, and know deep down, that it is a position that he never really wanted, and now he is in this position, and he finds himself there and I think it must be — as a daughter, and someone that looks up to a parental figure like that — it must be a unique and strange thing, but she has an opportunity to really make a big impact just by being vocal. I have met her several times in the past, and many years ago, and we both grew up in New York, and we have some friends in common, and she is a very well-spoken and smart, intelligent woman, and I think engaging … but the whole situation baffles me.
Scarlett Johansson Called Ivanka Trump a Coward