Jessica Chastain, PETA and Climate Change Activist Protest Hours Apart – celebritiestalks
Three major events in Fashion, films and sports turned into a stage for protests on Thursday night. Activists borrowed the attention given to New York Fashion Week, the U.S. Open and the Venice International Film Festival to alert their audiences about climate change, animal cruelty and the current Hollywood strike, respectively.
Four environmental activists disrupted Coco Gauff’s match against Karolina Muchova during the U.S. Open at the Arthur Ashe Stadium stands in Queens, New York. The protesters were wearing T-shirts that read “End Fossil Fuels.” One of them glued his bare feet to the ground, making it harder for security guards and police officers to remove them.
A protest against fossil fuel usage at the 2023 U.S. Open.
GC Images
Gauff, who won the semifinal match by 6-4, 7-5, showed her support for the protesters — even though her game was delayed by 49 minutes.
“I believe in climate change. I don’t know exactly what they were protesting.…I 100 percent believe there are things we could do better. Would I prefer it not happening in my match? One hundred percent. It is what it is…moments like this are history-defining moments. I wasn’t p–sed at the protesters. I always speak about preaching what you believe in. It was done in a peaceful way. I can’t get too mad at it…if that’s what they felt they needed to do to get their voices heard, I can’t really get upset at it,” she said after the game.
A group called Extinction Rebellion claimed to be responsible for the protest. “No tennis on a dead planet! If we don’t disrupt, nature will,” the organization said in a statement.
Around nine miles away from Arthur Ashe Stadium, another protest happened at the New York Public Library in Manhattan, where Coach unveiled its spring 2024 collection during New York Fashion Week. Two supporters of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals interrupted the show, crashing the runway.
One of the protesters was covered in body paint, creating a skinned body illusion, with the words “Coach Leather Kills” painted on her chest. Behind her, another protester held a sign with the same message. “It’s time to STOP selling someone else’s skin and drop leather,” PETA wrote on Instagram.
During the 2023 Venice Film Festival in Venice on Friday, Jessica Chastain also took the spotlight to protest. The actress was one of the few actors allowed to promote her film “Memory,” which received a waiver from SAG-AFTRA. While attending a press conference to discuss the project, Chastain made a statement by wearing a T-shirt in support of the strike and confessed she was feeling “nervous” to attend the event.
Jessica Chastain at the 80th Venice International Film Festival 2023 on Sept. 8.
Getty Images
SAG-AFTRA actors joined WGA writer strikers over an ongoing labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on July 14. The protests are taking place at Paramount, Disney, Universal, Sony, Fox, Amazon and Netflix studios.
“I am here because SAG-AFTRA has been explicitly clear that the way to support the strike is to post on social media, walk the picket lines and to work and support interim agreement projects. It’s what our national board, our negotiating committee and elected leadership has asked us to do. When indie producers sign these agreements they are letting the world know, they are letting the AMPTP know that actors deserve fair compensation, they have protections that should be implemented and there should be sharing of streaming revenue. So I hope being here today encourages other producers, encourages actors to show up….Hopefully we’ll see an end to the strike soon and hopefully the AMPTP will go back to the table,” Chastain said during the press conference, according to Deadline.
Grabbing the media attention during major events is an old tactic of activism. In 2019, Extinction Rebellion, the same group that interrupted Gauff’s U.S. Open match, shut bridges and poured buckets of fake blood blocking the flow of commerce in London’s Oxford Circus during London Fashion Week. The group’s mission was to highlight the Fashion industry’s negative impact on the environment.
PETA’s supporters also have a long tradition of crashing runways to raise awareness about their cause — one of the first protests happened during a Victoria’s Secret Fashion show in 2002, when activists ambushed Gisele Bündchen on the runway. Meanwhile, Chastain’s Fashion choice meets the Statement Ts movement, used by protesters to spread their messages and slogans, from supporters of the “Black Lives Matter” movement to feminism and LGBTQIA+ activists to Katharine Hamnett’s iconic T-shirt “58% Don’t Want Pershing” that she wore to a reception in London with then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Jessica Chastain, PETA and Climate Change Activist Protest Hours Apart – celebritiestalks
