During a panel discussion at the Producer’s Guild of America’s Produced by Conference, Morgan Freeman and his producing partner Lori McCreary talked about their very first meeting, which is when things took a messy turn.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the first thing Freeman recalled was “she had on a dress cut to here,” adding, “she doesn’t want to be thought of as a pretty face, she wants to be thought of as serious. But you can’t get away from the short dresses.”
Yes, because wearing a short dress immediately means a woman cannot be taken seriously, never mind that McCreary is a former tech CEO and current president of the Producers Guild of America.
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Moderator and producer Mark Gordon noted that audiences could see Freeman’s words as sexist and misogynistic — which they are — but Freeman assured everyone that he was just a regular old sexist, not a misogynist. “Sexist? Yeah. But I’m not misogynistic.” So, while Freeman doesn’t outright hate women, he does discriminate against them.
However, Freeman praised McCreary — who later in the panel revealed that she too might be sexist — and remarked on her work ethic and integrity, saying “[Women] have never been the weaker sex.” But that little nugget of praise was later buried under Gordon and Freeman’s comment that because women have less testosterone things are less of a pissing contest with Gordon adding, “There’s something we have in common. Morgan and I both like to sit down when we pee. We all work hard. If you can sit down when you have a chance, do.”
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