Natalie Portman talks fall of Time’s Up movement: ‘Mistakes are deadly for activism’

Natalie Portman reflected on all the mistakes that were made which eventually led to the fall of the Time’s Up movement, of which she was a founding member in 2018, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

The movement was founded on January 1st, 2018, by female Hollywood celebrities in response to the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases and the rapid expansion of the #MeToo movement.

“It was really, really heartbreaking that Time’s Up dissipated the way it did,” Portman told the outlet.

“I think a lot of people made mistakes, but mistakes are deadly for activism. You have to be so perfect in order to demand the change that you want to see, and I don’t know, maybe acknowledging all our imperfection as humans and saying that people can do something wrong and also be good at something else, having a little bit more shades of grey might actually let us get to more progress.”

The Black Swan alum also added that while the movement ended, a lot of good came out of it too. “There was something so powerful about just gathering women with similar experiences and sharing. And so many amazing things have spun off it that I think those relationships have persisted and have turned into incredible other projects.”

However, she added that it was “still painful” that Time’s Up “doesn’t exist anymore as it was.”

She surmised that “for an entire movement to not be allowed to exist because of individual mistakes or even collective mistakes, I think that we have to be able to make mistakes and learn from them and allow that.”

Moreover, Portman elucidated, “It’s a great silencing mechanism to hold people up to perfection standards because then everyone’s like, ‘Well, I shouldn’t say anything because I’m not perfect.’”