Actress Angela Lansbury has gotten a taste of online culture in 2017, and she doesn’t seem to have liked it very much. The Beauty And The Beast and Murder, She Wrote star came under fire this week, after people took umbrage at comments she made that stated that women are in some part complicit for making themselves attractive to men who sexually harass or assault them.
Lansbury’s remarks—which included statements like, “We have to own up to the fact that women, since time immemorial, have gone out of their way to make themselves attractive,” and “We must sometimes take blame, women. I really do think that”—were part of a wider conversation in which she also stated that there was no excuse for a man to harm a woman. Caveats aside, though, her comments were still met with a great deal of anger online, including from groups like Rape Crisis England & Wales, which noted that victim-blaming attitudes are only ever harmful to people who have been subject to sexual assault.
Now, Lansbury has responded to the criticism levied against her, clarifying her points, citing her bona fides as a feminist, and expressing no small amount of anger at the feeling that she’s been misinterpreted or taken out of context. Her statement:
There is no excuse whatsoever for men to harass women in an abusive sexual manner. And, I am devastated that anyone should deem me capable of thinking otherwise. Those who have known the quality of my work and the many public statements I have made over the course of my life, must know, that I am a strong supporter of Women’s Rights. Lastly, I would like to add that I am troubled by how quickly and brutishly some have taken my comments out of context and attempted to blame my generation, my age, or my mindset, without having read the entirety of what I said.
Which, uh…Welcome to the internet, Dame Angela.