Hollywood’s Male #MeToo Movement Not Taken Seriously; Viewed As “Weakness,” According To Victimized Actors

The Hollywood male #MeToo movement has long been overshadowed by the female #MeToo movement. Males who have been sexually assaulted by other males in Hollywood have notoriously not been taken as seriously due to the narrative that men assaults are somehow not as critical.

NFL player turned actor Terry Crews detailed his sexual abuse in a string of tweets at the hands of Adam Venit, who was the head of the WME’s motion picture department. Crews detailed how Venit grabbed his genitals multiple times at a party in 2016. Venit ultimately apologized before being suspended and stripped of his title at WME. He eventually retired. Crews reached a settlement with WME in 2018.

Crews detailed his encounter just days after The New York Times and The New Yorker first ran stories on Harvey Weinstein’s sex abuse victims. However, due to his athletic background and 6-foot-2, 240-pound frame, Crews was not taken seriously. Instead, he was laughed at and became the topic of memes. Despite the scrutiny, Crews went on to be named one of Time’s 2017 people of the year (as part of a group of “silence breakers”). Unlike other men who have spoken out, Crews was fortunate enough to continue working as a lieutenant on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which is gearing up to shoot its eighth season.

Other actors, such as Johnathon Schaech, best known for his role in 1996’s “That Thing You Do!,” have seen their acting opportunities dry up. After Schaech spoke up about the sexual abuse that he endured at the hands of Italian director Franco Zeffirelli on the set of the movie “Sparrow” in 1993, his gigs became scarce. After disclosing his ordeal in 2018, Schaech parted ways with his agency, APA, as well as his manager, Risa Shapiro.

“I’ve never been so vulnerable in my life,” Schaech revealed. “Like, whoa, wait a minute. What did I just do?” He went on to explain, “People were taking one side of the #MeToo movement or the other, like a friend of theirs was called out, or a friend of theirs was affected. They didn’t necessarily hear my story. They heard their story.”

Luckily, Schaech was able to secure a meeting with friend and showrunner Greg Berlanti, who ultimately re-hired Schaech, allowing the actor to keep his SAG health insurance.

In 2017, Anthony Rapp came forward in an interview with BuzzFeed about how actor Kevin Spacey made an unwanted sexual advance toward him in 1986, when he was only 14. Spacey was 26 at the time and working alongside Rapp on Broadway. Spacey responded to Rapp’s accusation on Twitter, saying that he was “beyond horrified to hear his story” and apologized for “what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.” Over a dozen other men have since accused Spacey of similar unwanted sexual advances.

“The way Rapp spoke about it was incredibly freeing for me,” says “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” actor Alex Winter, who also revealed in a 2018 BBC interview that he was molested by an older man when he was only 13 while on Broadway. “I was just like, ‘OK. Here’s a guy that went through something similar to what I went through and speaks about it very intelligently but still honestly.’ “

Unfortunately, as Schaech explained, “If this happens to you as a man, it’s looked upon as a weakness.”