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Keira, Jennifer, and Sydney Flip the Script

Sydney Sweeney, Keira Knightley, and Jennifer Lawrence

It’s possible there’s a shift happening in popular culture amongst the celebrity class. After years of loud, opinionated Hollywood stars in interviews, on red carpets, shooting their mouths off, blazing across social media trumpeting their politics to grab up all that delicious liberal street cred, making sure we know that they’re on the right side of history…it appears that a few of them are taking a beat. They’re realizing that just because you can opine on something controversial, doesn’t mean you should. Three A list actresses gave interviews in recent weeks where each, refreshingly, made it clear: they aren’t taking the bait. Each of them made the graceful choice to maintain their discretion— and not go on the record.

Good taste and discretion! What a concept! Is this something we all might practice nowadays? We who wade through the murky, dirty waters of social media have gotten used to being impulsive, reactive, leaping before we look. We’re addicted to the visceral release we get when spewing whatever our momentary passions dictate. Our negativity of course attracts like-mindless negative people eager to spew…and woot! It’s a rage rave! We get shared…and liked…and on and on…and that dopamine release feels so damn good!! Oh yeah, I told those fuckers!

Then we wipe the saliva from our chins and go back to scrolling—looking for another topic to dump our potentially viral bitchery on. Fucking exhausting. I blame lockdown for these dysfunctional behaviors.

I think it’s time that we practice some discipline over our impulses. Take a moment right now and think of a famous person, dead or alive, whom you would consider the epitome of cool elegance and tasteful restraint. Audrey Hepburn comes to mind. Morgan Freeman perhaps—although his cool is a bit more badass, and he will tell you what’s what—but you ain’t gonna make Mr. Freeman take the bait.

Radical thought: what would happen if we were to think before we comment? Maybe count to ten. Step away from the phone or laptop, go outside, take some air, make a cup of tea perhaps…and then reconsider what, if anything, we want or have to say. Maybe we ask ourselves what our particular take would meaningfully, usefully contribute to the public conversation. If it doesn’t, then what would it do for us—what would we get? We might privately question our own motives. Think forward a bit. What does this comment say about us? How might it rebound on us? Is the ragey, viciously sarcastic point we’re just itching to make worth the potential fallout?

If the comment is intended merely to refute someone else’s take, or to lecture them on the facts whilst proving our superior knowledge, or just lash out at someone who’s being a dick, might we ask ourselves: Why is this important to me, and is it really worth it? Such fracas are easily avoided; most of us can pretty much guess what great swaths of folks in our online friend groups are going to say or do in reaction to a predictable litany of hot button issues. “Most people,” as Oscar Wilde said, “are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” Knowing what nastiness we can expect from people, we might ask ourselves: Why am I playing this game? Do I need this tsuris?

Imagine a world where it’s possible for us to have our opinion, to formulate a considered assessment of an issue or a controversy, going so far as to educate ourselves on the topic…and then just have the opinion…without sharing it? If an opinion falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it…does it make a sound? Nope. And what if that’s okay? That stored up opinion of ours might come in handy when we’re in conversation with someone reasonable who brings up the topic. Or maybe we save it for a tete-a-tete with a like minded friend, where we know it’s safe to vent. We still get to express our view, let it all out, and we even get affirmation of it from our agreeable mate. Is it possible there’s no need to make it public at all?

In recent days, three celebrity starlets have shown us the power of restraint, of discretion, of artfully, gracefully not answering the gotcha question from an interviewer eager for a viral moment.

Keira Knightley, being interviewed about her voice acting work for Harry Potter audiobooks, was asked the radioactive question: “Were you aware of the proposed boycott of JK Rowling, due to her public statements and gender critical views?” Bemused, smiling, Knightley said, “I was not aware of that, no. I’m very sorry. You know, I think we’re all living in a period of time right now where we’re all going to have to figure out how to live together, aren’t we? And we’ve all got very different opinions.” She laughed charmingly…and that was that.

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Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, in a New York Times interview, expressed regret for having been extremely outspoken politically in the past. She’s realized that if she can’t contribute something helpful or meaningful to the conversation, why add to the division and negativity in the culture? What celebrities think doesn’t really matter, in her view, and their opinions don’t have a real impact on how people vote. Lawrence feels her focus should be on creating art, letting her acting work and the films she makes speak to what matters to her and her values.

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Sydney Sweeney dropped the mic this past week in an interview with GQ. Months after her (unnecessarily) controversial American Eagle jeans campaign, the GQ interviewer thought she’d smile and giggle and ambush Sweeney with a gotcha question: did Sydney think that perhaps, in this political climate, “white people shouldn’t joke about genetic superiority?” Sydney, calm, her face like Switzerland, murmured, “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.”

No comment.

I dunno—maybe I’m crazy, but hey, you never know: this could be the start of a hot new trend! A rad new way of conducting oneself in the public sphere: not expressing an opinion! What if we make not commenting great again—especially when people are positively drooling for us to. Sydney’s stunning, sphinx-like silence still triggered a howl from the woke mob…but their frustration was palpable. Ooh, that secret MAGA bitch Sweeney denied them the dopamine hit they were jonesing for—the red meat they were dying to gnaw on.

They say sometimes you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Personally, I’d rather be damned for something I didn’t do—then sit back and watch people spiral out, bending themselves into apoplectic pretzels trying desperately to fill in the blank. People will talk. Haters will hate. Commenters will comment. But we all know, don’t we? There’s nothing quite as mysterious, intriguing, and maddening…as a poker face.