Casey Affleck Discusses Decision to 'Be Quiet' on #MeToo

Casey Affleck has faced sexual misconduct allegations during his career and he’s opening up about why he has kept mostly quiet about them in the past.

The 43-year-old actor had two sexual harassment lawsuits filed against him by two women that worked on the movie I’m Still Here, which he directed. He settled the suits out of court and all parties are barred from discussing details as part of the settlement. Casey also did not admit guilt and denied the allegations.

“I can’t imagine who would not be supportive of the #MeToo movement,” Casey said during a new interview on Dax Shepard‘s Armchair Expert podcast. “But it’s very, very hard to talk about. And it scares me, mostly because the values of the #MeToo movement are values that are at the heart of my being, just the way I was raised.”

Casey added, “The way that I’m thought of sometimes by certain people recently has been so antithetical to who I really am that it’s been frustrating. And not being able to talk about it has been hard because I really wanted to support all of that, but I felt like the best thing to do was to just be quiet so I didn’t seem to be in opposition to something that I really wanted to champion.”

“It’s a tough spot to be in, especially if you really do appreciate and want to be in support of the side that seems angriest and the anger’s directed at you. And I sort of decided, ‘Well I’ll just stay quiet mostly,’” he continued. “It’s not my experience but you have to respect that someone else had an experience and take that to heart and allow for it to be as possible as your memory of that experience.”

Casey also talked about being grouped in with other stories of sexual harassment and assault that have come to light with #MeToo.

“Suddenly your name is being mentioned in a group of people … On the one hand it’s like a sweeping judgement, and on the other hand there has been a lot of talk about, ‘Can we even make these kind of distinctions between the worst cases and sort of what is perceived as the tamest examples of it?’” he said. “I think there is some truth in that, you know, it isn’t about, ‘This isn’t so bad and that’s really horrible.’ It’s that it is systematic, it’s accepted culturally at its tamest manifestation of it and at its worst, and it all needs to be turned on its head, eradicated and not allowed for. And that kind of lightning bolt I think is effective.”