In the throes of Hollywood’s fight for female empowerment, actress Maggie Q turns to her future mother-in-law, the famed playwright and activist Eve Ensler, for inspiration.
“[Ensler] has been fighting for the rights of women for many years — way before Hollywood started speaking out,” the “Designated Survivor” star said in the April issue of Health magazine. “Women have been suffering these abuses for so long, for as long as the world has existed.”
Maggie, 38, is engaged to actor Dylan McDermott, whose adoptive mother wrote the groundbreaking 1996 play “The Vagina Monologues” and started the V-Day movement to end violence against women and girls.
Many of the themes in Ensler’s play — including sexual assault and rape — are echoed in the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements today.
“What’s incredible about right now is that when it happens to Hollywood, people listen,” Maggie said. “I’m happy that it’s out.”
She continued, “The fact that these men were able to get away with what they did because of the climate of fear they created, that’s what needs to go away. And we need to be talking more about the culture that has supported these men.”