“The Chi” creator Lena Waithe is speaking up about the recent sexual misconduct allegatons lodged against Aziz Ansari, and she believes there needs to be more discussion about what consent means.
Waithe co-stars with Ansari on his award-winning Netflix series “Master of None.” She has refrained from commenting since a 23-year-old photographer accused Ansari of inappropriate sexual behavior.
“Here’s the truth — in every situation, it’s not always black and white,” she told KPCC’s The Frame radio show. “And I know that’s simple for people, and it’s easy for people to [ASK], ‘Whose side are you on?’ There are no sides, really, in some of these scenarios. I’m not on Harvey Weinstein’s side, I’m not on Kevin Spacey’s side. But I think you have to take each situation (individually). You can’t just say, ‘Well, I’m on this person’s team, or I’m on that person’s team.’ It doesn’t work that way.”
The accuser, who remains anonymous, said she felt violated by Ansari after they had sex following a 2017 date. She shared her story last month on babe.net.
She texted him the next day, telling him how “uneasy” his behavior made her feel.
In his statement following the public accusation, Ansari acknowledged that he thought everything was fine: “It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned,” he said. “I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said.”
Waithe also voiced her support for the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements in her interview.
“It’s about really educating ourselves and not stepping in it and just [saying], ‘Oh, I’m sorry. My bad’ — and sort of keep going,” she shared. “It’s about really sitting with yourself and educating yourself in terms of what consent is, what it looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like. And all of us starting to really act accordingly based on this new information that I think we have now. We all gotta start talking to each other, start educating each other.”