Adam Sandler is being criticised for repeatedly touching Claire Foy‘s knee during an interview on the BBC‘s Graham Norton Show.
They were sitting next to each other on the couch (in-between Emma Thompson and Cara Delevingne), and as Sandler was talking he repeatedly rested his hand on Foy’s knee.
She looked quite visibly uncomfortable, eventually resting her own hand over his hand (to laughs from the audience) to acknowledge that it was there.
Fans immediately took to Twitter to express their discomfort.
Claire Foy replacing Adam Sandler’s hand onto his own knee rather than hers, was the perfect “haha dont touch me again” move #GrahamNorton
— Gwyneth. (@gwynethjane_) October 27, 2017
https://twitter.com/michellelmarsh/status/924085907631804416
https://twitter.com/Emilywho/status/924041353151111169
Sure, it doesn’t seem like much, and already you have the brigade of cries that this is “making things bad for REAL victims of sexual assault” and “every man is going to be crucified if you can’t even touch someone’s KNEE without causing offence” (although the argument could be made that the Venn diagram of people making these claims and people who don’t believe woman who speak up about sexual assault is basically a circle).
Foy’s representatives have even released a statement, saying they didn’t believe “anything was meant by Adam’s gesture and no [offence] was caused to Claire,” while Sandler’s have described the action as a “friendly gesture”.
But the fact remains that a woman doing her job had her personal space repeatedly invaded by a man, as have thousands upon thousands of women before her. It just so happened that this time there were witnesses.
You can watch the segment below.
https://youtu.be/-R6UzMN_z3o
