Alyssa Milano has slammed Matt Damon in an open letter, following his controversial comments on sexual misconduct.
The actor was speaking during an edition of ‘Popcorn with Peter Travers’ on ABC News when he spoke about the recent wave of sexual assault and harassment allegations in Hollywood.
Matt was heavily criticised for his comments, as he seemingly defending comedian Louis CK, who has been accused of sexual harassment, and went on to say that there’s a “spectrum” of inappropriate behaviour.
“There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?” he said. “Both of those behaviours need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated, right?”
Matt also spoke about the recent movement of exposing harassers on social media with #MeToo, and bizarrely brought up the fact that he would have been able to silence accusers with large sums of money if they made an allegation of sexual misconduct against him.
“Ten years ago, you made a claim against me and I had a big movie coming out, OK? I have $100 million or I have a movie that is personally important to me coming out, and close to the release of that film, you say, ‘Matt Damon grabbed my butt and stuck his tongue down my throat.’
“We would then go to mediation and organize a settlement. I’d go, ‘I don’t want this out there… it’s going to be overshadowing the opening of this movie. How much money do you want?’
“The lawyers would get together, and they do this cost-benefit analysis, and they’d go, ‘Oh, this is what it’s worth.’ And I look at the number and go, ‘OK, I’ll pay it, but you can never talk about this again. You’re f***ing lying about this, but never talk about this again.”
“Now… with social media, these stories get — it’s like they get gasoline poured on them. So the moment a claim is made, if you make that same claim today to me, I would be scorched earth. I’d go, ‘I don’t care if it costs $10 million to fight this in court with you for 10 years, you are not taking my name from me.
“You are not taking my name and my reputation from me. I’ve worked too hard for it. And I earned it. You can’t just blow me up like that.’ So I think once a claim is made, there will no longer be settlements. That’s just my prediction, I mean, just based on what I’ve seen.”
Matt received serious backlash for his tone-deaf comments, and now actress Alyssa Milano, who started the #MeToo Twitter hashtag, has weighed in by penning an open letter to Matt via a Twitter thread.
“Dear Matt Damon, it’s the micro that makes the macro,” she wrote. “We are in a ‘culture of outrage’ because the magnitude of rage is, in fact, overtly outrageous. And it is righteous.”
Dear Matt Damon,
It’s the micro that makes the macro.
(Thread)
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) December 16, 2017
“I have been a victim of each component of the sexual assault spectrum of which you speak. They all hurt. And they are all connected to a patriarchy intertwined with normalized, accepted–even welcomed– misogyny.
“We are not outraged because someone grabbed our asses in a picture. We are outraged because we were made to feel this was normal. We are outraged because we have been gaslighted. We are outraged because we were silenced for so long.
“There are different stages of cancer. Some more treatable than others. But it’s still cancer. Sexual harassment, misconduct, assault and violence is a systemic disease. The tumor is being cut out right now with no anesthesia. Please send flowers. #MeToo.”
Minnie Driver, who dated Matt back in 1997, also tweeted a link to an article about Matt’s comments with the caption, “God god, seriously?!”
Matt’s comments come after he branded Harvey Weinstein as an “a**hole” back in October, and admitted that he knew of Gwyneth Paltrow’s accusations about Harvey.
