The R&B artist and producer urged women to vote Hillary Clinton an save the future America.
"If all the women in this nation decided to vote and support the
first female candidate, there'd be nothing to worry about,"
Williams said in a conversation with Indiewire executive editor
and Variety editor-at-large Michael Schneider. "It's that easy."
Of Clinton, he added, "Has she been dishonest about things?
Sure. Have you?"
Accusing Clinton's opponents and Trump of "gender bias," he
said, "She don't lie no more than any other politician does."
At the end of a conversation that focused on Williams' wide-
ranging career in film, television, and music - including as a
producer of the upcoming feature "Hidden Figures," Schneider
asked Williams how the social and political polarization of the
day has impacted him and his work. Williams responded with
a long period of quiet.
He said:"That silence in this room right now is often what I feel when
you see some of the things that are being said, not just about
my culture, but about women," He spoke of the
need for women to wrest control of society from men.
"I'm praying that women come together and save this nation,"
he said. "You think about the destructive things that have
come from mankind, it's mostly men."
But he also was self deprecating as he contrasted the lyrics
from some of his more salacious songs - which he said were
written "in the spirit of dancing" - with
the misogynist language
employed by Trump and many of his supporters.
"I've had 60- and 70-year-old women come up to me and say,
'You know, I like that 'Drop it Like it's Hot','" he said. "And I've
had women come up to me, 80-year-old women, and say,
'That 'Blurred Lines' ...
"
Williams then raised his hand as if imitating someone about to
slap another person, and added, "But they knew where I was
coming from. And there's some other people out there, we
knew where they're coming from too.
In the closest he came to calling out Trump explicitly, Williams
said, "Are we going to let this other situation take over and
remind us what 'great' used to be?"
He then rejected the idea that Trump's "Make America Great
Again" slogan constitutes coded language.
"It's not a code, it's blatant," he said. "It made me not want to
wear red white and blue for a while, that rally. Those things
that were being said. Those t-shirts. I call them the bumper
stickers. Cause that's how they talk. Just like bumper
stickers."
Williams began the conversation talking with Schneider about
"Hidden Figures." Directed by Theodore Melfi and starring
Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monae, the
film is based on the true story of African-American female
mathematicians who contributed to the success of NASA'a
Mercury and Apollo programs.
"The female contribution to society was not acknowledged like
it should be," Williams said of the movie's mid-century setting.
"Women's contributions were often dismissed, discounted.
The idea that we get a chance to actually go back and shine a
light on the amazing accomplishments of these women - and
African-American women, you know. It's one thing to be a
woman in the 1960s. It's another thing to be an African-
American woman in the 1960s."
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