Kate Beckinsale posted a video on Instagram in which she detailed a handful of instances where she has suffered harassment and abuse on various sets. The “Underworld” star shared her horror stories in reaction to Blake Lively‘s sexual harassment complaint against her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star Justin Baldoni. Beckinsale said she was “grateful to Lively for highlighting this is not an archaic problem no one is facing. This is continuing.”
Beckinsale started by remembering one set where she was referred to as “that cunt” all because she had called out a male co-star who was “drunk everyday” on set.
“He was going through something. I have sympathy for that, but I was waiting, as was the crew, for six hours a day for him to learn his lines,” Beckinsale said. “It means I’m not getting to see my daughter in the evenings the whole movie. The studio’s response was to give me a bike so I could ride around the studio lot while I was waiting. And then, of course, I was called a cunt and a bitch. During a take I was called a ‘stupid bitch.’”
There were two films sets where “I was put on such a strict diet and exercise program — I lost my periods all together,” she continued.
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On one of her action movies, Beckinsale said her male co-star physically harmed her while filming a fight scene. She was then ostracized by the cast when she mentioned that she had been injured.
“There’s a certain kind of actor who gets a thrill out of legally being able to harm a woman during a fight sequence,” she explained. “And I was harmed, to the point where there were MRIs proving it. I was gaslit and made to feel like I was the problem and blamed and left out of cast dinners as soon as I mentioned there was a problem.”
Then there was a photoshoot that Beckinsale was “forced by a publicist” to do “the day after I had a miscarriage. I said, ‘I can’t. I’m bleeding. I don’t want to go and change my clothes in front of people I don’t know and do a photoshoot. I’m bleeding out a miscarriage.’ She was like, ‘You’ll have to, or you’ll be sued.’”
“This is going on. This has been going on forever. I have 47 million stories similar to this,” Beckinsale said about the harassment female actors often face on sets. “I was 18 and felt up by somebody that I really trusted on a crew. I went to the lead actress, who was known for being a supporter of women, and said this is happening and was told, ‘No, it didn’t.’ I went to another actress and said I’d just been assaulted by this man and told, ‘No, you haven’t been.’”
“If you mention it, you’re fucked,” Beckinsale added about why it continues to be impossible for women to be heard on sets. “It’s supposed to be, you absorb it and somehow you’re the homie. That has to stop. I am grateful to Blake Lively for highlighting this is not an archaic problem no one is facing. This is continuing. When it does happen a machine goes in place to absolutely destroy you.”
Watch Beckinsale’s full Instagram video in the post below.