Jessica Chastain On Calling Out Her ‘X-Men’ Producer Bryan Singer: “I’m Not Afraid”

The last month has seen a number of high-profile Hollywood players (Harvey Weinstein, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Brett Ratner, etc.) accused of sexual harassment and assault, with more people than ever coming forward to tell their stories. And there are even more people in Hollywood rallying around the victims, offering support and calling out injustice.

Two-time Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain has been a vocal on Twitter over the past month, even calling for Robin Wright to take over the lead of House of Cards as more and more men have come forward accusing Spacey of assault. On Friday, Chastain turned her attention to director Bryan Singer, the man who was at the center of his own controversy including accusations of inappropriate relations with underage boys a few years ago.

There’s just one wrinkle this time around: Chastain’s not calling out just any Hollywood celeb, she’s calling out a guy she’s currently working with.

Chastain has been cast as the Shi’ar Empress Lilandra in 2018’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix, a film produced by ex-X-director Singer.

Those tweets came just before Chastain embarked on the press tour for her upcoming film Molly’s Game, and obviously everyone wanted to know about her calling out her own producer. When asked, Chastain was, as the Daily Beast puts it, “diplomatic and forthright.”

“For me, there’s a lot that I have that isn’t acting,” said Chastain. “I made a decision very early on to not work with people that I felt abused their positions, and didn’t create a healthy environment for those around them.”

She elaborated on why she feels emboldened to speak out, even though many see it as potentially risking her job. “I do not feel beholden to anything. I’m going to speak my mind about any injustice that I see. I’m not afraid of anything in terms of that. And I think the greatest myth that an industry can create is to make people feel like they’re easily replaceable. I’m not going to allow that into my life.”

And while she didn’t call out Singer by name in the interview, she did explain why she chose to work on Dark Phoenix.

“I actually chose to do X-Men because I’m working with Simon Kinberg, who’s also a first-time filmmaker who I met on The Martian, and is an incredible writer and producer. He wrote this script—which I can’t say much about, because it’s X-Men—and there are many powerful female roles in this story that Simon is telling. And all of my dealings were with Simon and Hutch [Parker, another producer], who were on set.”