See Preview of Oprah’s ‘Time’s Up’ Panel With Reese Witherspoon, Natalie Portman
Oprah Winfrey will interview Hollywood advocates of the “Time’s Up” campaign against sexual misconduct, for a CBS Sunday Morning segment airing January 14th. Natalie Portman, Reese Witherspoon, Tracee Ellis-Ross, America Ferrera, Shonda Rhimes, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and attorney Nina Shaw participated in the panel.
In a preview of the discussion, Winfrey asks how men and women can talk about the topic of sexual misconduct in the workplace when it feels like such a charged issue.
“We’re humans. We’re all humans,” Portman said. “And I think it’s treating people as fellow humans. … It’s not because you have a daughter that you respect a woman, it’s not because you have a wife or a sister. It’s because we’re human beings, whether we’re related to a man or not. We deserve the same respect.”
Witherspoon, who opened up about her own experience with sexual assault during Elle‘s Women in Hollywood event last October, said. “I’m very emotional about it. … Somebody sent me this Elie Wiesel quote that said, ‘Silence helps the tormenters. It doesn’t help the tormented. And neutrality helps the oppressors and not the oppressed.’ There’s moments when you have to evaluate whether silence is going to be your only option. And certain times that was our only option. But now is not that time.”
“We have resources,” Witherspoon added. “But women who are workers in this country have nothing to gain in certain times by coming forward. But we want to help. It gives me strength to hopefully help other women.”
Winfrey got a standing ovation for her powerful speech at the Golden Globes in which she called on “magnificent women” and “some pretty phenomenal men … to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘me too’ again.”