Andie MacDowell Had a ‘Panic Attack’ on Set When Surrounded by ‘Roomful of Men’ During #MeToo
Andie MacDowell has been in Hollywood for almost 40 years, but for the long-time star, it can still seem like “Groundhog Dog” when it comes to gender equity on set.
“I have worked with so many difficult men!,” the actress recently told Marie Claire. “I’m really good with difficult men. I have great training, because I grew up in the South.”
The “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” star noted that while she typically would let “things roll off,” the #MeToo movement has shifted on-set dynamics. “I was always really good at not letting it affect me,” MacDowell said. “Sometimes I watch bad behavior and feel sorry for the person who’s behaving poorly, because they have to be suffering on some level to behave like that.”
The “Maid” actress did recall a “kind of crazy experience” in 2016 where she hit a breaking point during a production. “[It was] right after Trump got elected. I was really disturbed that nobody seemed to care about the vagina[-grabbing] comment; I had gotten really sad,” MacDowell said. “I went to do a job, a day’s work, and I had my very first panic attack. I was getting ready to shoot something, and I turn around and it’s, like, a roomful of men. Like, a sea of men. It flashed on something that was personal for me. And I dropped to my knees.”
MacDowell continued, “I left the room, and went into this fake bathroom on the set, and looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘Get your shit together.’ It just freaked me out, not seeing any other women. It’s not that I have anything against men. I don’t! I just don’t like big groups of them. Since then, I’ve become very conscious of looking around and finding the women on set, for comfort.”
She added, “#MeToo has been interesting — you do see the difference on set. There are a lot more women.”
MacDowell didn’t have to look far to find the women behind addiction drama “Good Girl Jane,” which marks director Sarah Elizabeth Mintz’s feature debut. The film will premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, which kicks off next month in NYC. MacDowell also leads upcoming British drama “My Happy Ending,” based on Anat Gov’s play about a famous actress who finds solace with three other women in a hospital.
The star previously told Deadline that social justice is not going to be achieved “fast enough” and the focus should be on the “more important” Time’s Up movement.
“I don’t want to diminish #MeToo in any way, but it’s more than that,” MacDowell said in 2018. “It’s also all these social issues. It’s also the fact that we still have not had a woman president in this country. You’ve got to stop and think how insane that is. We’re supposed to be progressive. We are not.”
