After John Lasseter was named head of Skydance Animation, Emma Thompson pulled out of a movie by the production company, “Luck,” and on Tuesday, released a letter she sent to the company explaining why.
Thompson, 59, had been set to voice a character for the Skydance movie “Luck” before withdrawing from the project.
“It feels very odd to me that you and your company would consider hiring someone with Mr. Lasseter’s pattern of misconduct given the present climate in which people with the kind of power that you have can reasonably be expected to step up to the plate,” Thompson wrote in the letter, which was released to the Los Angeles Times.
In late 2017, it was reported by The Hollywood Reporter that Lasseter, who co-founded Pixar, had been accused of making unwanted advances on women and “making comments about physical attributes.”
Following the accusations, Lasseter, 62, took a six-month sabbatical from Disney to reflect on what he called “missteps.” After the sabbatical ended in June, Disney announced that Lasseter would resume working for Disney in a “consulting” role before leaving the company on Dec. 31, 2018. On Jan. 9, Lasseter was named head of Skydance Animation, according to a statement from Skydance Media.
Emma Thompson went on to say in her letter: “If John Lasseter started his own company, then every employee would have been given the opportunity to choose whether or not to give him a second chance. But any Skydance employees who don’t want to give him a second chance have to stay and be uncomfortable or lose their jobs. Shouldn’t it be John Lasseter who has to lose HIS job if the employees don’t want to give him a second chance?”
“I am well aware that centuries of entitlement to women’s bodies whether they like it or not is not going to change overnight,” Thompson concluded. “Or in a year. But I am also aware that if people who have spoken out — like me — do not take this sort of a stand then things are very unlikely to change at anything like the pace required to protect my daughter’s generation.”
By: Maytinee Kramer
