Casey Affleck will no longer attend — or present at — the Oscars
The actor was accused of sexual harassment in 2010
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Sonia Rao.
At the Academy Awards, it has become a tradition for the previous year’s winner to present the opposite gender’s award the following year.
This year will be different. Casey Affleck, who won an Oscar for his role in “Manchester by the Sea” in 2017, will not present at this year’s awards show, his publicist said. In fact, the actor won’t attend the ceremony at all.
In 2010, two women — a producer and cinematographer — accused Affleck of sexually harassing them on the set of his mockumentary “I’m Still Here,” according to the Cut. The women alleged that Affleck verbally and physically harassed them throughout production. The actor denied the allegations, and the lawsuits were eventually settled out of court.
News of the incidents resurfaced during the 2017 awards season as Affleck became the clear front-runner for the Oscar. The backlash continued after he won. Brie Larson presented Affleck with his Oscar and had a noticeably muted reaction. While the audience gave him a standing ovation, Larson, a vocal advocate for sexual assault survivors, took a step back and refrained from clapping.
“I think that whatever it was that I did onstage kind of spoke for itself,” she later told Vanity Fair. “I’ve said all that I need to say about that topic.”
After his Oscar win, Affleck told the Boston Globe he couldn’t do much about the public’s response “other than live my life the way I know I live it and to speak to what my own values are and how I try to live by them all the time.”
Affleck hasn’t issued a statement about his decision to step aside as a presenter this year, and a replacement hasn’t been named.
A few months ago, New York-based director Cameron Bossert created a Change.org petition, calling for the Academy to bar Affleck from presenting the best actress award. Bossert shared that the chief executive of the academy publicly stated that they’d take the concern into account. Bossert added: “Whatever action they take from here, the message has reached them: There is enormous work to be done to change the culture of harassment and mistreatment of women in the industry, and it must be reflected in how they present themselves and honor artists in the industry.”
