As Christian pointed out a couple weeks ago, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson recently announced that he wouldn’t be making any more political statements or endorsements in the near future. But not everyone in Hollywood approves. In fact, two former Star Trek actors have gone on the attack.
Wil Wheaton doesn’t care for Dwayne Johnson’s approach to politics.
The Stand By Me actor called out the Jumanji: The Next Level star for declining to publicly comment on his political views.
“So disappointing to find out he is such a coward,” Wheaton wrote on Threads on Monday…
Wheaton is a vocal critic of President Trump, and previously campaigned for Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election.
Wil Wheaton of course has been in a bunch of movies and TV shows including Star Trek the Next Generation. He was actually responding to a statement by another Star Trek alum.
“Star Trek” icon George Takei is one of the Hollywood voices criticizing Johnson’s stance, writing on Threads: “Silence is complicity.”
Takei is also best known these days for his political hot takes. I’m actually surprised both of these guys are on Threads. I would have assumed they would fit in at Bluesky.
In any case, calling Johnson a coward and complicit is just a way of demanding he trumpet their own views. If he were a conservative they’d be glad he was keeping it to himself. But as best we can tell, he’s not. He endorsed Joe Biden in 2020.
Johnson has not been shy about speaking his mind on politics in the past, endorsing former President Joe Biden during the 2020 election, despite identifying as an Independent.
However, in April 2024, Johnson joined Fox News’s Will Cain to explain why he would not be endorsing a candidate for the 2024 presidential race.
“The endorsement that I made years ago with Biden was what I thought was the best decision for me at that time,” Johnson told Cain, adding that the division it caused “tears me up in my guts back then and now.”
“The takeaway after that months and months and months, I started to realize like, ‘Oh man, that caused an incredible amount of division in our country.’ So I realize now going into this election, I’m not going to do that. I wouldn’t do that because my goal is to bring our country together. I believe in that, in my DNA. So in the spirit of that, there’s going to be no endorsement,” he continued.
It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s for sale with people like Johnson. Maybe his concern is, as he’s suggested, about not wanting to create division among his friends or the country in general. Then again, as one of the leading actors in recent years, division also hurts his own bottom line. The sensible thing to do, really for all working actors, is to keep their politics to themselves and let the audience enjoy their work. But of course not everyone in Hollywood sees it that way.
Variety points out that Johnson isn’t the only big name who has pulled back on politics lately.
Jennifer Lawrence faced similar scrutiny last fall on the press tour for “Die My Love” when she spoke to The New York Times about her newfound resistance to talking to the press about politics. The Oscar winner was outspoken against Donald Trump during his first administration as U.S. president, notably writing an op-ed after Election Day in which she declared that Trump’s victory meant “the only people that feel safe [in America], that their rights are recognized and respected, are white men.”
When asked about her thoughts on speaking out now regarding Trump and politics, Lawrence answered: “I don’t really know if I should. The first Trump administration was so wild and just how can we let this stand? I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But as we’ve learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for. So then what am I doing? I’m just sharing my opinion on something that’s going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart. We are so divided.”
“I think I’m in a complicated recalibration because I’m also an artist,” Lawrence continued. “With this temperature and the way things can turn out, I don’t want to start turning people off to films and to art that could change consciousness or change the world because they don’t like my political opinions. I want to protect my craft so that you can still get lost in what I’m doing. And if I can’t say something that’s going to speak to some kind of peace or lowering the temperature or some sort of solution, I don’t want to be a part of the problem. I don’t want to make the problem worse… You watch these actors’ faces who have had incredible careers and made incredible contributions and then one half of the internet doesn’t want to see their face anymore. I get so upset for those people and it feels so wrong.”
If you want to make left wing films, as Lawrence does, that’s fine. People can decide whether they want to see those films or not. But if you want to make the kind of broad entertainment that Dwayne Johnson makes, you probably need to leave politics out of it so people can just enjoy the movies. He’s right, in other words. I wish more actors and actresses would follow his example.
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