Scarlett Johansson rejected Mohammed bin Salman's money for next film – News – telegram.com – Worcester, MA
Even before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, Scarlett Johansson reportedly suspected that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was a repressive and morally corrupt national leader and rejected funding from him for her next film.
Unlike White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, or other Hollywood figures Mohammed met during a U.S. trip in April, Johansson was not charmed by the young Middle East royal who has recently tried to present himself to the world as a reformer and globalist.
The actress still wasn’t charmed after learning that the 33-year-old crown prince wanted to fund her new film, which is directed by Ridley Scott and in which she would play Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario, The Guardian reported.
“Scarlett Johansson said absolutely not,” Addario said in a Facebook interview with Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. “She said: ‘This guy is perpetuating the war in Yemen. He has women in prison.’ This was before the killing of Khashoggi, when he became one of the main people who wanted to fund the movie.”
Mohammed has recently been implicated in the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who died in the Saudi embassy in Turkey after writing critically about Mohammed’s rule, The Guardian reported.
Addario, author of a new book, “Love and War,” said she suspected that the crown prince may have hoped for a public relations win by bankrolling a movie about a female journalist whose work focuses on global conflicts, including the effect they have on women.
“I didn’t meet with him personally,” Addario told Kristof. “But my sense is that he probably — my movie got folded into this huge charm campaign. And that fact that he wanted to show the west that he was into Hollywood, he was into all the great things of the west. … Do I want him associated with this movie? Obviously not. And thank God he’s not.”
Addario is referring to Mohammed’s three-week visit to the United States last spring, during which he went to Hollywood in an attempt to present himself to studio heads and other leading entertainment figures as a reformer and globalist eager to open his historically repressive society to Western culture and films.
During the trip, the crown prince met with, among others, Disney’s Bob Iger and Rupert Murdoch, who hosted a dinner party at his Bel Air estate that drew the actors Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the Hollywood Reporter wrote. Mohammed also met with Brian Grazer, Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel, Kobe Bryant and Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com CEO who owns the Washington Post.
During the meetings, human rights issues, such as the monarchy’s crackdown on political dissidents, were not on the agenda, according to The Guardian.
Johansson’s upcoming film, originally set to be directed by Steven Spielberg, is based on Addario’s memoir “It’s What I Do.”
Unlike a previous career choice, Johansson’s refusal to take Mohammed’s money isn’t likely to embroil her in controversy.
Johansson faced a backlash this summer after signing on to play a transgender character in the fact-based crime drama “Rub & Tug.” Criticism by transgender actors and others in the LGBTQ community led Johansson to abandon the project.
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