Ben Affleck is dutifully making his way around the talk show circuit at the moment, giving a command performance as someone who’s not totally sick of all this “being Batman” bullshit by now. Affleck’s efforts to promote his new superhero throwdown Justice League keep getting sidetracked in interviews, though, as various hosts, including Stephen Colbert and Today’s Savannah Guthrie, take the opportunity to grill him about his long-time association with Good Will Hunting and Shakespeare In Love producer Harvey Weinstein.
To Affleck’s credit, he’s been staying aggressively on-message whenever the subject’s come up, asserting that he believes the women who came forward with allegations against Weinstein (and even one of his own accusers, MTV VJ Hilarie Burton, who says he grabbed her breast while filming an installment of TRL), and repeatedly noting that he’s been donating his residuals from his Weinstein films to charity.
The only moment where the polish seemed to chip away from Affleck’s image as a suddenly-woke feminist occurred when Guthrie asked him about specific accusations from actress Rose McGowan, who’s suggested that she told Affleck about Weinstein’s alleged assault years ago, and that the actor simply blew her off. Even then, Affleck’s response was smoother than you might expect: “I don’t want to get into other people’s individual stories,” he said. “Those are their stories and they’re entitled to tell as much or as little of those. I believe Rose. I support her. I like and admire her tenacity and I wish her the best.”