Watching Helen Mirren Shut Down a Sexist Interviewer Never Gets Old
Helen Mirren has been dealing with sexist interviewers since before some of her fans were born. In 1975, Mirren — then 30 years old and a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company — sat down for a television interview with talk show host Michael Parkinson (whose show Parkinson ran from 1971 to 2007 in the U.K.). She was promoting her upcoming performance as Lady Macbeth. But before getting around to discussing Shakespeare, Parkinson proceeded to pelt Mirren with a series of uncomfortable questions about her body, nude scenes, and other subjects he’d almost certainly never discussed with male guests. The actress refused to smile and play along, instead rolling her eyes and turning Parkinson’s questions back on him. Decades later, her defiant interview became a viral video favorite, and it’s once again making the Facebook rounds. Watch the first part above, and the second part here.
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Right at the start of the interview, Parkinson asks Mirren how she can consider herself a quote-unquote “serious actress,” given that her “physical attributes” would no doubt “detract from the performance.” The actress doesn’t find this question cute and makes him stop being coy. “Because serious actresses can’t have big bosoms, is that what you mean?” she asks. Then she shuts him down and calls the question “boring.” Later, he asks her about her willingness to do onscreen nude scenes, and her eyebrow raise says it all:
In a 2010 interview with Bust magazine, Mirren remembered the 1975 interview well, calling it “enraging” but also “par for the course” in that era. Amazingly, Parkinson asked her about her breasts again when she finally returned to his show in 2006, promoting The Queen (for which she would receive the Best Actress Oscar). “You can’t resist, can you?” she asked him. “This was our problem the first time we ever met … and here we are again, full circle.” Which goes to show that sexist questions are still, as Mirren said, par for the course.
