Kate Beckinsale details industry-wide sexism in wake of Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni controversy

Inspired by Blake Lively’s recent allegations against her It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni, Kate Beckinsale has detailed her disregarded attempts at speaking out against sexism on set. In an Instagram video, Beckinsale breaks down numerous instances of her complaints against sexist behavior being ignored or dismissed at different points in her career. She says that her efforts to defend and protect herself from on-set and industry-wide misogyny frequently placed her in compromising, dangerous, and invasive positions that hurt her reputation.

Beckinsale clarifies that she does not know Lively or Baldoni but has followed the story closely and believes Lively’s allegations “highlighted this machine that goes into effect when a woman complains about something” in this industry. “This is not an archaic problem no one is facing,” she says in the video. “This is continuing.”

Beckinsale’s instances range from trying to work with an intoxicated coworker to “being felt up” by a crew member to being forced into a photoshoot the day after a miscarriage. Her complaints were rebutted or ignored in each instance while she was treated like a pariah. She recalls being “referred to over walkie talkie and my face as ‘that cunt’ because I said, ‘I’m finding it difficult [to work]; my co-star is drunk every day [on set].'”

“He was going through something. I have sympathy for that, but I was waiting, as was the crew, for six hours a day for him to learn his lines,” Beckinsale says in the video. “It means I’m not getting to see my daughter in the evenings the whole movie. The studio’s response was to give me a bike so I could ride around the studio lot while I was waiting. And then, of course, I was called a ‘cunt’ and a ‘bitch.’ During a take, I was called a ‘stupid bitch.'”