Daily Sabah: #MeToo – Emma Thompson refuses to work with disgraced ex-Pixar exec John Lasseter

26 February 2019

In a letter to Skydance Media, Emma Thompson outlined why she refused to work with the former Pixar executive John Lasseter and was withdrawing from the animated film “Luck.”

Thompson departed the project last month shortly after Skydance chief executive David Ellison hired Lasseter, the Pixar co-founder and former Walt Disney Co. animation chief. Lasseter last year was forced out at Disney after acknowledging “missteps” in his behavior with female employees.

In her letter to Ellison , Thompson said she felt it was “very odd to me that you and your company would consider hiring someone with Mr. Lasseter’s pattern of misconduct given the present climate.”

“If a man has been touching women inappropriately for decades, why would a woman want to work for him if the only reason he’s not touching them inappropriately now is that it says in his contract that he must behave ‘professionally’?” wrote Thompson. “If a man has made women at his companies feel undervalued and disrespected for decades, why should the women at his new company think that any respect he shows them is anything other than an act that he’s required to perform by his coach, his therapist and his employment agreement?”

A representative for Thompson confirmed the letter Tuesday, which was first published in The Los Angeles Times. A spokesperson for Skydance declined to comment.

Lasseter’s hiring provoked a backlash from some who said the animation executive didn’t deserve a second chance so quickly. Time’s Up, the nonprofit organization formed to combat sexual harassment and gender inequality in Hollywood and elsewhere, said his hiring “endorses and perpetuates a broken system that allows powerful men to act without consequence.”

Read the full article on Daily Sabah.