Matt Lauer, Meghan Markle, Revenge Porn: Broadsheet for Nov. 29
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Valentina Zarya
Updated
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Meghan Markle is making lots of compromises, senators want to make revenge porn a federal offense, and just this morning, ‘Today’ host Matt Lauer was fired over a complaint of sexual harassment. Enjoy your Wednesday.
EVERYONE’S TALKING
• A feminist princess? On Monday, British royal Prince Harry and American actor Meghan Markle announced their engagement. By Tuesday, the couple had released details about the proposal (they were home, roasting a chicken) and their wedding plans (the date’s set for May and will take place at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, a “very special place” for the couple). At the same time, in an interview with BBC’s Mishal Husain, Markle confirmed rumors that she would not be returning to Suits, the FX show she starred in for seven seasons. When Husain asked the actor about giving up her career, Markle put a different spin on it. “I don’t see it as giving anything up,” she said. “I see it as a change. It’s a new chapter.”
Whether you call it sacrifice or a change, the fact is that Markle plans to put her acting career on hold, leave her home country, and stop her work with the United Nations and other philanthropic organizations. In April, she shuttered her lifestyle blog, The Tig, which she had been running for three years. Once she ties the knot, Markle will transition “out of my career and into my new role” as the Duchess of Sussex, which means she will focus on “getting to know more about the different communities here and smaller organizations that are working on the same causes that I’ve always been passionate about,” she said in the BBC interview.
The decision to leave it all behind for a man may raise some eyebrows among feminists, who no doubt are hoping Markle’s track record at UN Women (where she served as an Advocate for Political Participation and Leadership), as well as her biracial heritage would make her an important ally in the fight for British women’s equal pay and efforts to combat sexual harassment, which has emerged as a serious issue in U.K. parliament last month.
But Markle’s choice to leave acting and move across the pond doesn’t necessarily signal that she’ll ignore those initiatives. For one thing, she played Rachel Zane on Suits for seven years—and sounds as if she’s more than ready to move on. “Once we hit the 100 episode marker, I thought to myself, I have ticked this box,” she said. And stepping away from UN Women doesn’t mean she’s abandoning her commitment to gender equality. In fact, with her now-global platform, she may actually be able to make a much bigger difference.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
• Off the air. Host Savannah Guthrie kicked off Wednesday’s Today Show host with the bombshell announcement that her co-anchor Matt Lauer, arguably America’s most prominent morning host, had been fired over a complaint of sexual harassment. NBC confirmed the news in a tweet: “On Monday night, we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer. As a result, we’ve decided to terminate his employment.” Fortune
• #MeTooNatSec. More than 200 women who work on national security for the U.S. signed an open letter saying that they have survived sexual harassment and assault, or know someone who has. The letter, titled #MeTooNatSec and signed by women who have served in the State Department, the intelligence community, USAID, and the Pentagon, calls for stronger sexual harassment reporting, mandatory training and outside data collection on how often it occurs. Time
• ENOUGH is enough. Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA), Richard Burr (R-NC), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced a new Senate bill Wednesday that, if passed, would make revenge porn a federal crime. The bill, Ending Nonconsensual Online User Graphic Harassment (ENOUGH) Act of 2017, has bipartisan support as well as the backing of big tech companies like Facebook and Twitter. Fortune
• Harvey hits keep coming. Harvey Weinstein is being sued for sex trafficking by British actress Kadian Noble, according to a civil suit filed Monday in New York. The suit claims the Weinstein Co. violated federal sex trafficking law “by benefiting from, and knowingly facilitating” the producer’s travels to “recruit or entice female actors into forced or coerced sexual encounters on the promise of roles in films or entertainment projects.” Weinstein said nothing non-consensual occurred. Unrelated to the suit, the movie mogul announced that he was stepping down from the Directors Guild of America on Monday. USA Today
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
• Is Angela gaslighting? Angela Lansbury, British actress known for roles in Murder, She Wrote and Gaslight, is in hot water after insinuating that attractive women are partly to blame for sexual assault. “There are two sides to this coin. We have to own up to the fact that women, since time immemorial, have gone out of their way to make themselves attractive,” the 92-year-old actress said in an interview. “And unfortunately it has backfired on us—and this is where we are today.” Fortune
• A path forward at Apple. Path Forward, a nonprofit that works with companies to create ‘returnship’ positions for mid-career professionals, announced on Tuesday that 10 new companies will be joining its network next year, including Apple, Oracle, Intuit, and Udemy. Fortune
• Lady’s so fresh. A film written, directed, and about a woman is now the most-liked movie ever on the review site Rotten Tomatoes. Lady Bird is a coming-of-age film by Greta Gerwig (her first), starring Irish actress Saoirse Ronan. The film is also generating lots of Oscars buzz for both writing and acting. Fortune
• Hall of Famers. Vanity Fair spotlights the four New York Times journalists—Jodi Kantor, Michael Schmidt, Emily Steel, and Megan Twohey—who led the investigations that took down Harvey Weinstein and Bill O’Reilly, and “opened a Pandora’s box of pent-up forces that freed other women (and some men) to come forward with scalding testimonies that for too long had been silenced by fear, shame, and intimidation.” Vanity Fair
