Hong Chau: It’s about time we saw more diversity in Hollywood

Hayley Campbell meets the Golden Globe-nominated actress ahead of her new film, Downsizing

Like (almost) everyone else at the Golden Globes, Best Supporting Actress nominee Hong Chau wore black in solidarity with Time’s Up, the legal fund to support victims of sexual harassment or assault.

I’d ask her about it, but we met when she was here for the London Film Festival premiere of Downsizing – seven days after Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the news on Harvey Weinstein. The sound recording of Weinstein talking to the model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez wouldn’t be released until a few hours after our interview, and the beginning of the fall of the Hollywood old guard was still to come. It was a strange morning to sit in a hotel room interviewing a Hollywood actress about the release of her second-ever film (her first was Inherent Vice), her career just taking off in a place where the ground beneath everyone’s feet is shifting. Her co-star, Matt Damon, hadn’t yet weighed in on the Weinstein effect. #MeToo hadn’t happened. The discussion was not yet entirely sexual assault and the power dynamics of a white male Hollywood; it was, if you looked in the right places, largely about the racial divide in a white male Hollywood.

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