Key Points
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Weapons star Amy Madigan explained why she and husband Ed Harris didn’t clap for Elia Kazan at 1999 Oscars.
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“There was no way we were going to do that,” Madigan said in a new interview.
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Kazan, who directed On the Waterfront, testified at the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Weapons actress Amy Madigan is currently courting Oscar buzz for her role as Aunt Gladys in the breakout horror hit, but she’s also addressing an Academy Awards controversy she was present for nearly three decades ago.
Following an introduction by Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese at the 1999 Oscars, stars like Warren Beatty and Kathy Bates were shown standing to applaud On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan’s acceptance of an Honorary Award from inside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
However, a shot from the live broadcast showed Madigan and her husband, actor Ed Harris, looking stone-faced as they watched Kazan accept his statuette in the room.
“Yeah, there was no way we were going to do that. No way,” Madigan, 74, said during a recent interview with the New York Times, though the quote was not included in the final piece, and instead posted to social media by journalist Kyle Buchanan.
Madigan touched on Kazan’s House Un-American Activities Committee testimony in 1952 amid the blacklisting of Hollywood figures suspected of being communists during the Red Scare.
“My father, who’s not with us anymore, he was a political analyst and a journalist and he was working on Capitol Hill when McCarthyism was going on and it really, really affected him deeply,” Madigan continued. “And yeah, that whole thing was really bringing it back to me. I was like, ‘Nope.'”
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Madigan and Harris for additional comment.
Kazan became a pariah in some Hollywood circles following his HUAC testimony, during which he named eight people who’d participated in Communist Party activities alongside him.
In a 1997 interview with the Times, Kazan reflected on pushback he received over the years.
“You want to know the truth? Not one bit,” he said when asked if he was bothered by the anger against him nearly five decades after his HUAC testimony. “I’ve had so much praise in my life. Some of it deserved, some of it not deserved. What does it matter?”
Kazan continued, ”That whole time wasn’t very nice. People were really hurt by what went on. I was part of it, I suppose. I spoke my mind and I had a right to do it.”
Though Kazan died in 2003 at 94, his Hollywood legacy lives on through his son, Matilda and Bicentennial Man writer Nicholas Kazan, and his actress granddaughters Maya (The Knick) and Zoe Kazan (Olive Kitteridge).
In a recent interview with EW, Madigan additionally reflected on her Weapons success. Writer-director Zach Cregger’s horror hit has earned $150 million at the global box office after only 10 days in release.
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“It’s not that I discount it, but in this business, nothing’s real till it’s real,” she said about the thought of returning for a sequel, comparing the buzz to chatter about her potential Oscar nod for the film. “I just had such a great time working with Zach and being inside that brain of his. That’s really the gift of how the movie came out. The other stuff has to do with all sorts of conversations that I would never be privy in and business things like that. But, you know, I love Gladys, so I’ll leave it at that.”
Weapons is now playing in theaters nationwide.
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