"I can't even begin to tell you how many casting couches I was attacked on. Not just by casting people, but by stars"
About this Quote
McCarthy’s line lands with the blunt, almost careless candor of someone refusing to package trauma into a neat, audience-friendly anecdote. “I can’t even begin to tell you” is doing double duty: it signals scale (this happened a lot) and breakdown (language fails when the pattern is that relentless). The “casting couch” phrase is culturally preloaded, a winking industry euphemism that once played like tabloid innuendo and now reads as an indictment of an entire pipeline of exploitation.
The sharpest twist is the pivot: “Not just by casting people, but by stars.” That “not just” forces a reassessment of where power lives. We’re trained to imagine predation as a backroom transaction run by gatekeepers, but she widens the circle to include the supposedly aspirational figures-the ones whose fame sanitizes them, whose public image is often built on charm and approachability. “Attacked on” also matters. It rejects the old framing of coercion as a murky exchange or “consensual” hustle; it names violence, not scandal.
Contextually, McCarthy sits in a complicated lane: famous enough to be heard, branded enough to be doubted. As a model and pop-culture personality, she’s been treated as both commodity and narrator of her own commodification. The quote anticipates the post-#MeToo vocabulary without adopting its careful institutional tone. It’s messy, accusatory, and strategically unspecific-a way to speak the truth of a system while sidestepping the legal and reputational tripwires that keep so many stories untold.
The sharpest twist is the pivot: “Not just by casting people, but by stars.” That “not just” forces a reassessment of where power lives. We’re trained to imagine predation as a backroom transaction run by gatekeepers, but she widens the circle to include the supposedly aspirational figures-the ones whose fame sanitizes them, whose public image is often built on charm and approachability. “Attacked on” also matters. It rejects the old framing of coercion as a murky exchange or “consensual” hustle; it names violence, not scandal.
Contextually, McCarthy sits in a complicated lane: famous enough to be heard, branded enough to be doubted. As a model and pop-culture personality, she’s been treated as both commodity and narrator of her own commodification. The quote anticipates the post-#MeToo vocabulary without adopting its careful institutional tone. It’s messy, accusatory, and strategically unspecific-a way to speak the truth of a system while sidestepping the legal and reputational tripwires that keep so many stories untold.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
|---|
More Quotes by Jenny
Add to List

