Jason Bateman really put his best foot forward in an interview about the new
season of Arrested Development. He did not put his best foot forward. Hey! You're
watching What's Trending, I'm Anna Lore. In an interview with the New York Times,
the cast of Arrested Development talked about what it's been like working on a
show that started 15 years ago. In a lucid moment of actual journalism, the
New York Times addressed a difficult topic -- Jeffrey Tambor and his sexual
harassment allegations on the set of "Transparent". The conversation shifted
toward Jessica Walter who Tambor had apparently verbally berated on set years
before. "Verbally? Yes he harassed me, but I he did apologize. I have to let it go, and
I have to give you a chance to you know for us to be friends, but it's it's hard
because honestly Jason says this happens all the time. In like almost 60 years of
working, I've never had anybody yell at me like that on a set." Jason "it's all
good here" Bateman tried his best to defuse the tension by normalizing
Tambor's behavior and gas lighting Walter at every turn. He said: "There's a
context. What we do for a living is not normal, and therefore the process is not
normal sometimes, and to expect it to be normal is to not understand what happens
on set. Again, not to excuse it, Alia, but to be surprised by people having a
wobbly route to their goal, their process -- it's very rarely predictable." It's just
not a good excuse. I'm sorry. It's 2018. You can't blame your behavior
on artistry, like it's ridiculous to think that Jeffrey Tambor needs to
sexually harass people or verbally abuse them so that he can achieve his goals
and his acting performance. That's nuts to me. Caution: hot take.
Cuidado. Bateman prefaces a lot of his statements where he excuses Tambor's
behavior with "not to excuse it, but". I'm not racist, but... The craziest thing about
this article to me is how Walters is constantly has to defend herself and her
very real experience, like it was onset. It's not like he yelled at her in private and we
are arguing whether or not they believe her. They're, they're telling her how to
feel about her own experience in this interview. It's like they they're scared
that she's gonna be honest about it? Like what? It's...
their reaction is so inappropriate and disrespectful to Jessica Walter, and if
they were worried about the outcome of this article, you know? Like that's the
only thing I can think of for why they need to constantly correct what she's
saying basically. Like, they should have thought about what the actual
inflammatory part of this article would be, which is you silencing a woman. That
was clearly the thing that was going to get picked up. Okay, let's give a little
background to how this all started. Earlier this year, Tambor was fired from
his role on the Amazon show "Transparent" after accusations of sexual harassment
on set. Then in May in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Tambor denied the
harassment allegations, but admitted he had a temper and referenced his blow-up
at Jessica Walter. And in the interview, she she even says like I didn't bring
this up. You brought it up in an interview,
Jeffrey. Otherwise I would never talked about this, you know? Bateman comes off as
so defensive of Tambor in the interview at the expense of what Jessica Walter
went through, it's no shock that this article is creating controversy. JimmyG
303 says: "Jeezus - Bateman is such an enabling peacemaker. You can tell he
hates confrontation and needs everyone to feel comfortable. He's got to deal
with that, [because] he's wrong." It's interesting because like this could have
actually been a really interesting exchange between Walter and Tambor if
you didn't have like referee Bateman there trying to play devil's advocate
on everything. @greytfriend: "It isn't a family, it's a job. There are rules about
how you behave at work. Period." Beth Elderkin: "This piece makes me uneasy, but
in a way it's a case study of how our society responds to harassment against
women: Men rush to defend and normalize -- with the occasional "I'm not defending,
but -" platitudes. The only one truly saying "this is not acceptable" is the young
woman." And she says it one time and it's basically completely ignored and so then
she just doesn't say anything for the rest of the interview. And I think we can
all agree with Tranic1 who says: "I think it is f*cked that they use at David
Cross' corpse in a Weekend at Bernie's type fashion cause, "they were too far in to
recast". The man was a person and you should be treated with the dignity he
deserves." RIP, David Cross. David Cross is alive and is in fact only 54 years
old, but his beard is eternal. Unsurprisingly, Jason Bateman publicly
apologized in a series tweets. He said: "Based on listening to the NYT
interview and hearing people's thoughts online, I realize that I was wrong here.
This is a big learning moment for me. I shouldn't have tried so hard to
mansplain, or fix a fight, or make everything okay." Tony Hale also
apologized, tweeting: "I have reached out to Jessica personally to apologize.
Arrested Development is one of my families. Regardless of my intentions, it
is clear that my words, both said and unsaid, serve to minimize Jessica's pain
and for that I am extremely sorry." Reactions to Bateman's apology are
expectedly mixed. Lexi Alexander tweeted: "Jason Bateman's apology makes no sense.
If you know that was horrible behavior then what made you do it?
None of what he tweeted this morning occurred to him in a room, sitting
opposite a crying, clearly hurt woman. It only occurred to him after he was made
aware of the backlash?" You don't have an excuse for not knowing because guess
what? There are hundreds of books and articles lots of people saying stuff
online that you could have checked out and educated yourself on, but you decided
not to because it wasn't worth your time and so now this is happening to you. You
are not aware of yourself and your surroundings, you're not aware of the
culture that you're contributing to, and so you got a spanking. I'm sorry. What is
important is that he said some things out loud, heard many different opinions
on why that might not be the right thing to say, and he's thinking about it now,
right? Like the idea that everyone can be perfect the first time I think is false.
He could have done better. And Joe Berkowitz writes in an article for Fast
Company: "It seems the main thing some men have learned from this moment is that
men are now more vulnerable to consequences than before, and sometimes
it's men we like. The real takeaway from all this should instead be that men
absolutely cannot keep doing what they've always done, across the board-and
that includes automatically standing up for friends and heroes just because we
like them." Yes! Can they like will these dudes f*cking change? You know what I mean? Like the
only reason they stop their behavior is because they got caught. Like, it takes a
lot of work to change that kind of mindset where you just see women as
objects, or just see women as a sexual gratification, you know, and it's
especially heinous that he was doing it to trans women. Like, that's even more
horrible because he figured, he the star of a trans centered show, actually assessed
that trans women would have less of a voice,
and so they're therefore they were easier to prey upon. What do you guys
think? Is this a real learning moment for Jason Bateman, or is he just apologizing
because of the outrage? Let us know in the comments below, and for more stories
like this head over to whatstrending.com.