Maggie Gyllenhaal is one of my favorite actors of all time. She’s been in a variety of roles–from meek, submissive BDSM participant in “Secretary” to Batman’s love interest in “Batman” to the cheeky older sister in the cult movie “Donnie Darko” (alongside her brother, Jake).
Now, she’s starring in a new TV show called “The Deuce,” a HBO porn drama set in 1970s New York. Yes, that’s right.
Gyllenhaal plays plays Candy, a prostitute, on the show–which is is also producing. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the mom of two opened up about how the recent election prompted her to take the role, of which she was initially hesitant:
“We shot so much of it during the 2016 presidential election. We finished shooting maybe the very end of October, so the five or six months leading up to that were pretty intense in this country.
I feel like it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot anyway since Trump was elected president: misogyny and my sense of feminism and the sexism I encounter in the world. I think before he was elected, I imagined that we were in a very different state than we’re in.
Playing a prostitute, or a sex worker I should say, in 2017 is a very delicate thing. I was very aware of that, and I wanted some kind of guarantee that it wouldn’t turn into something that I couldn’t ultimately stand behind.”
For 39-year-old Gyllenhaal, as a woman and a mom, it was especially important for her to take a producer role to make sure all of the nuances were being portrayed properly and fairly, saying:
“I think without portraying real violence against women and the possibility for violence against women, without portraying the exploitation that can be and often is inherent in porn, how do you tell the story? At the same time, through porn my character is totally woken up and enlivened. She finds a sense of self.
What I love about the show is that I don’t think that it’s moralizing on one side or the other. It’s trying to portray something in a complicated way that includes all of its gray areas, and I don’t think you can do that if you shy away from the reality of the possibility of violence and the possibility of exploitation, which is a part of it.”
Gyllenhaal recently appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show, where she echoed much of the same sentiment, literally saying she’s not going to take sexism anymore.
If we don’t consider ourselves feminist, what do we, as humans, consider ourselves? People who don’t believe in gender equality?
On a side note, however, can we all just marvel at how Gyllenhaal is an underrated fashion icon?
Because she so is:
