The night of June 17, Rose McGowan tweeted a screenshot of casting notes she had been sent for an audition. They read: "Please make sure you read the attached script before coming in so you understand the context of the scenes. Wardrobe Note: Black (or dark) form fitting tank that shows off cleavage (push up bras encouraged). And form fitting leggings or jeans." With the screenshot, McGowan tweeted: "casting note that came w/script I got today. For real. name of male star rhymes with Madam Panhandler hahahaha I die."
After tweeting it, she simply went to bed, not thinking much of it. When she awoke, the tweet had gone viral and was starting to be picked up by the media — it was, after all, about a high-profile project, Adam Sandler's new Netflix movie The Do Over."I was, like, oh dear — if you think that's bad,” she remembered thinking. “I was mostly flummoxed by everybody thinking that was so horrible; it's just par for the course. It was more a stupidity offense — bad manners offend me. And then I was thinking, How many people's hands did that pass through before that was just sent out to every woman coming in?"
McGowan then said in a deadpan tone: "The role, by the way, is for a supermodel who's obsessed with Adam Sandler." She fell silent, looked at me pointedly, and started to laugh.
With Neve Campbell in Scream.
Dimension
One week after her tweet about the Sandler audition, McGowan screened her short film Dawn— her directing debut, which had premiered at Sundance in 2014 — for the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City. "Which is one of the highlights of my career so far. It was a huge honor," McGowan said. As she left the stage after the Q&A, she checked her phone and saw an email from Innovative Artists, her agency — dropping her. "Like, 'We no longer want to work with you,'" she said. She felt a wave of "semi-panic — my ankles shook a little."
But McGowan worked through the fear. "And then I was, like, fuck ’em! Fuck you," she said for emphasis. And then I just wrote back, 'You're hilarious.' Because I thought it was hilarious." She also tweeted about it, of course: "I just got fired by my wussy acting agent because I spoke up about the bullshit in Hollywood. Hahaha. #douchebags #awesome #BRINGIT."
That tweet went viral too, and drew support on social media from Jessica Chastain ("Her treatment confirms the misogyny underpinning the industry. She should be celebrated for speaking out.") and producer Megan Ellison ("@rosemcgowan you're a fucking badass. The sexism that plagues our industry is disgusting and a disservice to humans everywhere. Fight on."). When a Twitter troll asked McGowan what she'd worn to be cast on Charmed— the long-running WB show on which McGowan played a witch — McGowan tweeted back, "Whatever I fucking wanted to." Then her Charmed co-star Holly Marie Combs joined the thread: "She was offered Charmed...... sight unseen. Probably at home in sweat pants. Next question please."
But the sequence of events wasn't just the usual tempest in Twitter's teapot — here today, gone 10 minutes later today. Two days after McGowan was dropped by Innovative, she went on Good Morning America, America's No. 1 morning show, to talk about, in her words, the "systemic abuse of women in Hollywood." Paula Faris, who interviewed her, told her GMA colleagues that McGowan offers "such great advice.""It's about telling the next girl, 'She doesn't have to sell her body or her soul to be creative.' It's such a great message for women," Faris said.
McGowan with Dawn actors Tara Barr (left) and Hannah Marks at the Sundance Film Festival in Jan. 2014.
Getty Images
The difficulties women have had navigating Hollywood permeate every part of the business, from writers rooms to directors' chairs to below-the-line production jobs — and, of course, to acting, which can be rife with the most corrosively age-obsessed, looks-conscious, and sexualized aspects of film and television. But lately, there seem