Julianna Margulies defends Matt Damon over sexual misconduct remarks

Julianna Margulies has defended Matt Damon against controversial comments he made about sexual misconduct in Hollywood last year (17).
The Bourne Identity star found himself under fire in December after attempting to argue that inappropriate behaviour should be tackled according to its level of severity.
In an interview with ABC News, he said, “I think it’s wonderful that women are feeling empowered to tell their stories and it’s totally necessary… (but) I do believe there’s a spectrum of behaviour… There’s a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?
“Both of those behaviours need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated.”
After facing backlash for trying to explain the levels of harassment and abuse, Damon apologised, but Margulies doesn’t think he needed to.
“I didn’t think that was right,” she said during a podcast chat with U.S. newswoman Katie Couric. “I understood what he was saying. He was completely compassionate about what was going on with people who are raping, but it’s not the same as what’s going on with people who are joking around on a (movie) set.”
“You have to differentiate between what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable,” she continued. “The dialogue has been opened, finally, after all these years. The reason the pendulum swung so far was that women… it’s been bubbling under the surface and this tiny little opening happened, and we all just ran out of that one ripped seam.”
Julianna has been open with her own experiences with sexual misconduct in Hollywood, having previously claimed she had an awkward run in with disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles.
She also has alleged she had an awkward late night encounter with Steven Seagal when she was 23.
“A casting director, a woman, said… ‘Steven Seagal wants to go over the scene with you in his hotel room at 10 o’clock at night’,” she said on SiriusXM’s Just Jenny show in November (17). “I lived in Brooklyn, and I said, ‘Oh, I don’t do that. I don’t travel. I don’t have money for a cab’. And I didn’t. And I said, ‘And I don’t take subways late at night’. And she says, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll reimburse you…’
“I got to the hotel at 10.40, and she (casting director) wasn’t there. And he was. Alone. And he made sure that I saw his gun… I had never seen a gun in real life. I got out of there unscathed.”