Carey Mulligan on Playing Whistleblower Reporter Who Exposed Harvey Weinstein S*x Scandal: ‘This story will impact people’
Carey Mulligan has taken on a very brave role in her latest acting venture, She Said. The 37-year-old is playing the role of New York Times journalist, Megan Twohey, who exposed infamous Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein for his numerous sexual abuse allegations.
This Friday saw the Los Angeles premiere of the film at the 2022 AFI Fest where the Oscar-nominated actress talked to PEOPLE and shared her journey of the making of She Said.
Carey Mulligan shares her journey working on She Said
“I think we felt that weight of responsibility, and I felt that on other jobs. I think particularly when you play a real person, you have that, but the stories that we were telling are so real and so recent, and not just to the people that were involved in the film, but to viewers, to an audience.
You’re aware that this story will impact people who go and see it in the cinema, so I think we all felt like it was a big task and we took it very seriously.”
The inspiring story of Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor
The Drive actress also took quite a liking to the person she portrayed in the biography. She claimed that her “biggest joy” in the entire journey was celebrating the premiere with the lady who the film is about, Megan Twohey, and Jodi Kantor, her fellow reporter who was played by Zoe Kazan, in addition to the surviving victims of Weinstein.
The Great Gatsby actress also shared how much she cherished and appreciated the way that Twohey “gave unfettered access to her life” thus making it a great bonding experience for the actress who felt that the process of actually getting to know the person she was portraying helped her a lot to do justice to the role. She said,
“I’ve never played a person who’s still alive. I played real people, but I’ve been reading autobiographies, so this was really exciting, and she’s just the coolest person. So I wanted to be her friend. I wanted her to like me.
Our kids hung out together. We had play dates. She brought her daughter to my son’s birthday party, and she was just so generous. She was amazing.”
Further describing Twohey, the Promising Young Woman actress said that,
“journalism is a vocation for her, it’s not just a job. It comes from this deeply rooted belief that she has that her vocation is to uncover injustice and mistruths and show them.”
Harvey Weinstein was convicted of charges of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape in 2020 after over 80 women made serious allegations against him. The man was eventually sentenced to 23 years in prison.
