Actor Hannah Einbinder has said the cost of not speaking up about Palestine is greater than losing her Hollywood career.
The Emmy-winning Hacks star, who leads the new queer slasher drama Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, told an audience at Cannes film festival she would not be deterred from standing up for causes she cared about.
“I follow in the steps of Palestinians who have set the bar, who have always had to be their own advocates,” Einbinder said.
“I am really pleased to join a tradition of Palestinians and Jewish allies who are committed to being vocal in a time where a lot of people shy away from that. I follow their lead.”
When asked about fears of being blacklisted like fellow actors Susan Sarandon and Melissa Barrera, who have both said they lost work due to speaking out about Palestine, Einbinder said: “I think what they know is what I know, which is that the cost of not speaking is higher.”
She added: “There is a greater toll in not speaking and you’ve just got to have your priorities straight. I am under no impression that my small career could ever measure up in comparison to even one human life. It’s an obligation and I will always do it.”
Einbinder went on to champion other pro-Palestine actors. “I would love to work with Melissa and Susan and … and Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem. All of them,” she said, before joking: “Road trip movie! This crazy gaggle of people are all in a car, this summer!”
During her Emmys acceptance speech last year, Einbinder declared: “Fuck ICE, free Palestine and go Birds!” In a recent podcast interview, she noted how “people in Hollywood, unfortunately, need these issues to affect a white person for them to see it as relating to them”.
Speaking at the Kering Women in Motion talk on Thursday, Einbinder also discussed Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which premiered in Cannes on Wednesday night. In it, she plays Kris, an indie film-maker reviving a cult horror franchise with one of its original scream queens, played by Gillian Anderson.
She said the film was “about shame and discomfort around sex”, which is “something we don’t talk about”.
She said it was a product of director Jane Schoenbrun’s experience of “coming into themselves and feeling a liberation from shame, embracing their desire and identifying as a queer person. I think a lot of people who are members of marginalised communities can identify with it.”
On her seductive chemistry with Anderson, Einbinder said she didn’t believe “chemistry is built, it’s organic”, and praised Anderson’s “physical choreography and her voracious desire to understand her motivation” in every moment.
“Gillian wrote a book called Want, a collection of women’s anonymous sexual fantasies. She’s just been immersed in this subject matter. Everybody really brought their own thing to it,” she said.