Actor Adam Brody and actress Florence Pugh have called for a “free Palestine,” adding that they will be more vocal about the ongoing conflict in Gaza going forward.
Speaking with Vanity Fair, Pugh said that she was “never scared of” speaking out, citing last September when she said at the Together for Palestine event, “Silence in the face of such suffering is not neutrality, it is complicity, and empathy should not be this hard and it should have never been this hard.”
“I don’t know why it took so long for people to start talking and for people to actually feel sympathy,” she told Vanity Fair. “But no, I was never scared of it.”
Pugh even admitted to feeling guilty about enjoying her life while “babies are still dying” and “mothers are still in pain.”
“It’s still happening, though,” Pugh said. “Babies are still dying. Mothers are still in pain. It’s really horrible to be watching such pain when so much of our lives just seem to be moving forward. I think that’s what I’ve found so difficult about social media as well: How can I say I’m having a really good time when literally one scroll up, I’m looking at a baby that’s motherless and fatherless?”
Likewise, speaking with GQ, Adam Brody (The O.C.) outright accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
“I’m not trying to plead ignorance — here we are doing a political interview, so it makes sense that we wade into this territory — but I’ve never ducked a question, really, not a political question anyway,” he said.
“Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide,” he added. “Put me down as wanting a free Palestine. It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery, but it does feel like it’s reaching a breaking point that it should have a while ago.”
He did, however, defend his decision to stay offline.
“I think being off social media has been the healthiest thing. I’m forced to use a lot of tools and products where I don’t believe in the heads of those companies, but I’m sure as shit not going to be on anything that Elon Musk is a part of,” he said. “I know people are doing really good work on [X], and I’m really glad about that. But it’s not for me, and I don’t have any guilt about not being on it. Sorry, I feel great about it.”