The drama, based on a true story, suggests that the real-life journalist Kathy Scruggs — who has since died — had sex with an FBI agent in order to obtain information about Jewell being a suspect in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing. But Kevin Riley, editor at theAtlanta Journal-Constitutionwhere Scruggs worked, recently told PEOPLE there’s “no evidence” to support the implication.
At the Gotham Awards in New York City on Monday night, Wilde, 35, defended the movie and said the criticism surrounding her character is unfounded.
“I have an immense amount of respect for Kathy Scruggs,” WildetoldThe Hollywood Reporteron the red carpet. “She’s no longer with us, she died very young, and I feel a certain responsibility to defend her legacy — which has now been, I think unfairly, boiled down to one element of her personality, one inferred moment in the film.”
Scruggs broke the initial story that Jewell — a security guard at Centennial Olympic Park, heralded as a hero for discovering the explosive and alerting police before it detonated — was a suspect in the attack, which killed one and injured over a hundred people.
Theo Wargo/Getty
Wilde argues that critics are sexualizing her character, and feels that’s due to her Scruggs’ gender.
She continued, “This is very specific to female characters, we’ve seen it over and over again, and I think that Kathy Scruggs is an incredibly dynamic, nuanced, dogged, intrepid reporter. By no means was I intending to suggest that as a female reporter, she needed to use her sexuality. I come from a long line of journalists — my mom’s been a journalist for 35 years — there’s no way I would want to suggest that.”
“I do think it’s interesting that when audiences recognize sexuality within a character, they immediately, when it’s a woman, allow it to define her, and I think we should stop doing that and allow for nuance,” Wilde added. “It’s sort of a misunderstanding of feminism to expect women to become pious and sexless.”
Claire Folger/Warner Bros
Riley, who didn’t work at theAtlanta Journal-Constitutionat the same time as Scruggs, still sees the portrayal as harmful to a journalist he said everyone regarded as “a really great reporter who was just tireless in terms of developing her sources.”
“To persist in this idea that a female journalist only gets a big story this way is not only obviously completely untrue and insulting to all the women, frankly everybody in this profession but especially women, it’s just concerning” he added to PEOPLE. “I have trouble imagining why that storyline would need to be invented in order to get the powerful messages of what happened in this situation across.”
Richard Jewellwill be released in theaters on Dec. 13.
source: people.com
