George Clooney accused of blacklisting a victim of harassment on E.R.
Did you guys know that I never watched ER? I never even watched the reruns. So I’m taking it on blind faith that ER’s faithful viewers will know the name Vanessa Marquez. Marquez played a nurse on the first three seasons of ER, apparently, and then she was blacklisted. This is what she says now, on Twitter. There’s a lot of back and forth on her Twitter feed (plus she tweets constantly), but in response to George Clooney’s interview in the Daily Beast last week, Marquez thinks he’s full of it because he did nothing to stop her from being harassed, nor did he do anything to keep her from being blacklisted in Hollywood. Those are her claims. So I don’t have to embed her tweets, here’s the context:
Marquez responded to a link to Clooney’s Daily Beast quotes, about how he didn’t know anything. She wrote that it was “BS” (bullsh-t) and “Clooney helped blacklist me when I spoke up about harassment on ER. ‘women who don’t play the game lose career’ I did.” When she was asked what kind of harassment, she wrote “Sexual (p-ssy grabbing) & racial. Mexican jokes EVERY day. Happened to all the women. They chose 2b victims. I fought! #Blacklisted.” When questioned further by Twitter peeps, she says she wasn’t fired, and she didn’t leave the show initially because “I had rent,” but that she left after the third season, even after they offered her a contract for the fourth, which she refused. When she was asked who the “p-ssygrabbers” were at ER, she said it was a crew member. She also said the racial abuse came from Anthony (Edwards), Noah (Wyle) and Julianna (Margulies). She says she complained to John Wells, who was the executive producer, and “Wells was the boss &I 1st reported it to him. His 1st question: Did George do something to u.”
Even if our current (and hopefully permanent) habit is to now believe women, or give professed victims the benefit of the doubt, I still don’t exactly see what George had to do with her being blacklisted, if she was even blacklisted in the first place? She says flat-out that she was offered another contract and she left, and I can understand why she wanted to leave if she was being harassed. But did George really have her blacklisted? I don’t know. I think it’s far more likely that he didn’t give a sh-t one way or the other? Anyway, George issued a statement in response to Marquez’s accusations:
“I had no idea Vanessa was blacklisted. I take her at her word. I was not a writer or a producer or a director on that show. I had nothing to do with casting. I was an actor and only an actor. If she was told I was involved in any decision about her career then she was lied to. The fact that I couldn’t affect her career is only surpassed by the fact that I wouldn’t.”
Yeah, I believe that he wouldn’t actively try to blacklist her. What I will believe is that he didn’t give a sh-t either way. Which is still a problem, just not the same problem that Marquez is accusing him of. “Indifference” to sexual harassment is not the same as actively punishing a victim of harassment, but interestingly enough, the result is usually the same.
Photos courtesy of Getty, Instagram.
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