You gotta hand it to John Oliver – that’s the way to do it. The veteran TV host hammered Dustin Hoffman over the latter’s recent sexual harassment allegations live on stage during a panel, leading the actor to volley back with an angry defence.
“This is something we’re going to have to talk about because […] it’s hanging in the air,” Oliver said to Hoffman at the discussion, which was a panel at an anniversary screening of Wag the Dog. He was clearly referring to the allegations made by actress Anna Graham Hunter, who claims that Hoffman groped her and made inappropriate comments on the set of Death of a Salesman in 1975 when she was just 17 years old.
“It’s hanging in the air?” Hoffman replied. “From a few things you’ve read, you’ve made an incredible assumption about me. You’ve made the case better than anyone else can. I’m guilty.”
The topic was raised about halfway through the hour-long panel, and dominated the rest of the discussion. During the heated discussion, Hoffman accused Oliver of blindsiding him with the topic of discussion, and said neither Oliver nor the organisers of the Tribeca Film Festival told him this would be a live issue.
Hoffman denied even knowing Hunter. “I still don’t know who this woman is,” he said. “I never met her; if I met her, it was in concert with other people.”
The back and forth between Oliver and Hoffman intensified, with Hoffman accusing Oliver of not having “an open mind” about the situation and unquestioningly believing women. In the following exchange, Hoffman seemed to suggest the accuser had an ulterior motive of some kind.
HOFFMAN: Do you believe this stuff you read?.
OLIVER: Yes. Because there’s no point in [an accuser] lying.
HOFFMAN: Well, there’s a point in her not bringing it up for 40 years.
Oh, Dustin.
Fellow panel member, producer Jane Rosenthal erroneously tried to defuse the conversation by trying to direct Oliver’s attention to so-called “real sexual predators”.
“It wasn’t produced by Weinstein or Miramax…Kevin Spacey wasn’t starring in it,” she said. “Let’s look at real sexual criminal predators.”
“That’s a low bar,” Oliver retorted.
Inexplicably, Hoffman cited the film Tootsie – in which he plays a volatile actor who dresses as a woman to get film parts – as proof of his feminist credentials:
I would not have made that movie if I didn’t have an incredible respect for women. The theme of the movie is he became a better man by having been a woman […] I said when I came home to my wife that I never realised men were that were brutal, that men are that obvious. They didn’t find me attractive and they just erased me.
At one point, the crowd became involved in the proceedings, with one female audience member yelling out “Move on!” She was quickly drowned out by someone scolding her, and another audience member yelling “Thank you for believing women,” to cheers.
Oliver expressed exactly why he brought this up as the conversation descended into chaos. “I can’t leave certain things unaddressed,” the host said. “The easy way is not to bring anything up. Unfortunately that leaves me at home later at night hating myself. ‘Why didn’t I say something? No one stands up to powerful men.’”
You can watch a portion of the conversation for yourself here, courtesy of The Washington Post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuhT_sb7px0
