Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal said President Donald Trump‘s first election in 2016 is what inspired her to take up directing films like “The Bride!” ahead of the film’s lackluster release.
In a resurfaced interview last month, Gyllenhaal spoke with the New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast to promote her feminist horror take on the “Bride of Frankenstein” character where she discussed the shrinking number of female directors working on major projects.
Despite the low number, Gyllenhaal described the “impact” female directors like Chloé Zhao have made and argued that there could still be a huge cultural pushback from the lack of female voices, using Trump’s election as an example.
“I will say, and I don’t know if I’ve said this out loud before,” Gyllenhaal said. “Again, maybe I’ll get in trouble, but I actually think that when I really became a director was actually I think the first time that the morning that Trump was first elected, I think I was like, I have a lot more to say than I’ve been saying.”
Gyllenhaal added that the industry seems fine with women making “little movies” but warned that things can “get dangerous when women have their hands on a lot of money.”
“Like, if you’ve had your mouth shut for so long, almost like a geyser, like having your hand on something, well, when it bursts, it’s going to come out really powerfully and with a lot of energy… I will say one thing about this. It’s going to bring like an unstoppable response maybe, especially from women,” Gyllenhaal said.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Gyllenhaal’s representatives for comment.
Though Gyllenhaal has not previously cited Trump as a reason she began directing, she has criticized the president in past interviews. In 2017, Gyllenhaal told Stephen Colbert that Trump’s election opened her eyes to misogyny still present in the modern world.
“I think before he was elected, I – sexist things would happen all the time in my life, I’d kind of go, ‘you know what? I’m fine. I don’t need to unpack that. I don’t need to take that apart. I’m lucky. I’m doing fine. I’m just going to take that.’ And after he was elected, I went, ‘I’m not going to take that anymore,’” Gyllenhaal said on “The Late Show.”
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Gyllenhaal made her directorial debut with the 2021 film “The Lost Daughter” and also directed an episode of the 2020 TV miniseries “Homemade.”
Gyllenhaal’s latest film “The Bride!” failed to land with audiences, grossing only $13.6 million globally in its opening weekend against a $90 million budget with an extra $65 million reportedly spent on marketing.
“The Bride!” also only received mixed reviews from critics, according to the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes.
