Meryl Streep: ‘There Isn’t a Man in this Audience Who Could Out-Lift Serena Williams’

Yahoo Beauty editor in chief Bobbi Brown and actress Meryl Streep at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. (Photo: Getty)

Over Labor Day weekend, the first screening for Meryl Streep’s upcoming British period film, Suffragette, opened the Telluride Film Festival. Yahoo Beauty’s editor in chief Bobbi Brown hosted a party afterwards to celebrate the film and the three-time Academy-Award winner. The movie is about the late 19th century and early 20th century women’s movement to gain the right to vote. Streep portrays Emmeline Pankhurst, an influential suffragette known for leading militant tactics, such as the 1909 hunger strike, in which women were finally force fed through tubes inserted through the nose and mouth. Other members of the cast include Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter.

“I hosted the party because the movie is about women’s empowerment,” Brown told Yahoo Beauty. “For someone who grew up while women were and still are making history, it’s important to look back on how we got these rights. It didn’t just happen! A lot of women lost their lives.” The history of suffragettes is oftentimes glossed over in history textbooks, and Brown’s 17-year-old son was astounded by what he learned from the film. “We’re still fighting for equality now, but no one looks back to see how we got here,” Brown said, planning to see the film again with her girlfriends. “I don’t usually get emotional over films, but this one got to me because it made you really grateful to these women for what they’ve done.” At the end of Suffragette, the dates of when women received the right to vote in various countries is displayed onscreen. In Saudi Arabia, women were only granted the right to vote in local elections this year.

The ‘Suffragette’ movie stars Helena Bonham Carter, Carey Mulligan, and Meryl Streep. (Photo: Focus Features)

As reported by Variety, Streep actually only appears in the film for a few minutes — director Sarah Gavron mentioned that she wanted an “iconic actress” to play the iconoclastic suffragette. In a Q&A after the film screening Streep said: “I think that women of that generation felt that lack — they had it built into them. They felt lesser than; and it’s a very difficult thing to dislodge from your mind once it’s placed there. And the people who shake it off and realize that we are all human beings and equal — it doesn’t mean you all have the same upper body strength, because there isn’t a man in this audience who could out-lift Serena Williams.”

Off screen, Streep has also been involved in women’s advocacy too. In June, she sent letters to all 535 members of the United States Congress, urging them to back the Equal Rights Amendment and finally ratifying it for women. “I am writing to ask you to stand up for equality — for your mother, your daughter, your sister, your wife or yourself — by actively supporting the Equal Rights Amendment,“ she wrote. There is a “whole new generation of women and girls are talking about equality — equal pay, equal protection from sexual assault, equal rights,” she added. Suffragette may be in the period drama genre — but its resonance holds true for women (and men) of all ages to this day.

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