Politics & Power Quote by Emma Thompson

Thompson’s phrasing is strikingly unglamorous for a celebrity: “I suppose,” “try and,” “connective tissue.” It’s a deliberate downshift from star-as-authority to star-as-messenger, a self-editing humility that doubles as a credibility strategy. She isn’t claiming expertise over “badly affected areas”; she’s claiming proximity and responsibility, positioning herself as the human bridge between worlds that usually meet only as headlines and charity campaigns.

“Connective tissue” does heavy lifting. It implies a body politic that’s injured or numb, with information failing to travel between its parts. In that metaphor, her work isn’t the cure or the diagnosis; it’s the circulatory system. She’s describing a role that’s less about persuasion through argument and more about translation: turning lived realities “on the ground” into something legible, felt, and harder to ignore in “rich countries.”

The subtext is an indictment of distance. “Here and in America” subtly names the Anglophone media sphere that can set the agenda for global attention, while “rich countries” widens the target beyond national borders to a class of insulated publics. There’s also a quiet acknowledgement of the suspicion that follows celebrity advocacy: the fear of performative compassion, the optics of parachuting in. By foregrounding communication rather than saviorhood, she tries to pre-empt that critique.

Contextually, it reads like a defense of the actor-activist lane: if you have access to cameras and columns, you can function as infrastructure. Not the story, but a conduit for it.