Evangeline Lilly explains why she attended that anti-vaxx rally in 2022

At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Evangeline Lilly posted some crap on Instagram about how she and her family were refusing to quarantine and that “freedom” was more important to her than public health. Less than two years after that, in January 2022, she attended a dumbf–k convention in Washington DC full of anti-vaxxers, and she once again used her Instagram to spread horses-t about “bodily sovereignty.” As Evangeline has promoted the latest Ant-Man movie in recent weeks, I’ve wondered why no one has asked her about these stances. Well, Marvel managed to time everything for late in the promotion – she has two new interviews in which she addressed the Covid/vaccine dramas and they came out just as the film was being released. Here are some highlights from her Esquire interview:

She lives in Hawaii, not LA: “I’ve always kept myself on the outside. I’ve never lived in LA. I’ve always worked very little on purpose to sort of have a normal life outside of Hollywood.”

The good girl: “I’ve spent most of my life trying to be a good girl. That’s a very dangerous game to play in Hollywood, because there are a lot of agendas.”

When ‘Lost’ blew up: “All my life, I’d been like, No way, nothing scares me. But I suddenly realized I was legitimately afraid of fame.”

She played the guy’s girl. “Men were hyper-impressed by a chick that could act like a dude… [On ‘Lost’ she thought] I’m going to wear low-slung jeans and kick-ass boots and a white sleeveless tee, and I’m going to climb a tree and punch guys in the face.”

She now understands that she had absorbed the need to adopt masculinization: “As a little girl. I was so passive and sweet. I was very shy, and I was quintessentially, stereotypically feminine. But very quickly I learned that’s not cool. I learned that will end up making you a victim. If you want to be the victor, here’s the path; you better adopt masculinity in a hurry. I did, and it worked. That’s gross, right? I had spent a lifetime learning how to please men in a way that was like I got to be in the room with them. I was allowed a key to the kingdom. I got a seat at the table because I could hang, because I was tough, because I was athletic, because I could be crude, because I could take a joke, because I could flirt, but in a way that was mutual, and they didn’t have any power over me. Men liked that sort of tough-chick thing. I had built this whole persona that was all about getting a seat at the table, and it worked. It f–king worked!”

Reinventing herself after Me Too: “All of that me that I stuffed away to be acceptable to the boys’ club is going to be meaningless pretty soon, and I’m going to have to start from scratch. I’m thirty-five; I don’t know if I can start from scratch. I realized I had become a misogynist to survive misogyny. I was self-aware enough to look at myself and go, you are in a panic because your currency ain’t going to count anymore.… That is essentially what happened. Being a cute, tough, young white girl is no longer what’s going to get you in the door—which is f–king great! I was celebrating that for everyone else at the same time as being like, Oh my God, I’m in trouble.”

Her “business as usual” Instagram post at the start of the pandemic: “I didn’t expect anyone to pay attention to it, because no one ever pays attention to what I post… I ended up having enough people say to me, ‘Well, there’s a lot of people who are dying right now, and it might have been really insensitive to what they’re going through,’ and that resonated for me.”

Attending an anti-vaxx rally in January 2022: “I know the beast that I’m attacking,” she recalls thinking then. “I know that I have a little pebble and there’s this f–king Goliath giant. If I shoot this pebble, it’s going to wake the giant.” Though she says she asked herself “about six hundred times” whether she should post, she ultimately decided to wake the giant. “I just wanted people out there who were struggling because they were under severe pressure to do something they didn’t want to do to know that they weren’t alone, to know that there were people who actually felt they had a right to say no.”

She can’t have it all: “I can’t have it all. I’ve learned that. That was a lie I was told in the 1980s, when I was growing up as a little girl and being empowered by the feminists in the eighties saying, ‘Honey, you can have it all.’ You can’t. ’ve learned never to say never. I mean, it would be comical at this point for me to be like, ‘I’m never going to act again,’ because I’ve said that thrice and have not followed through.”

[From Esquire]

Good lord, she sounds like a self-absorbed a–hole. When Me Too started happening in late 2017, her first reaction was “oh, I’m in trouble, I can’t play these Cool Girl games anymore.” Literally, her first f–king thought. And the way she’s STILL speaking about the pandemic and vaccines is deeply troubling. Anyway, when she was asked (on the Happy Sad Confused podcast) about Marvel’s reaction to her anti-vaxx BS, she said:

“They’re very respectful.In fact, I’ve had direct conversations with them that I have instigated and they’ve always said, ‘That’s not our business. That’s not for us to tell you how to live your life or what opinions to have.’ And I actually even got a really supportive phone call from [‘Ant-Man’ director] Peyton Reed at one point and just saying like, ’Just so you know, there’s some rumors spreading about Marvel ditching you or canceling you. And that didn’t come from Marvel and that didn’t come from us, so just ignore that.’”

[From Variety]

Please tell me this movie is her last with Marvel? I wonder if Marvel treated her differently than they treated Letitia Wright – who also made anti-vaxx statements – when she filmed Wakanda Forever.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CoxWl7JOOrZ/

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Esquire.

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