Exclusive: Selma Blair on Her Troubled Hollywood Post-October 7 Cancellation

By now half the world has surely heard about the Selma Blair flight incident. The actress, who has long struggled with multiple sclerosis and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome was flying to New York from Los Angeles last Sunday evening. After posting a serene series of fall-themed selfies on Instagram, she suddenly experienced agitation and confusion. At some point she injured her head and bloodied her own nose.Erratic behavior followed, suggestive of a seizure, during which two flight attendants sustained minor injuries. She was then placed in plastic restraints and transferred to a stretcher on landing, still disoriented. During this transfer she allegedly kicked a police officer and later, at the hospital, a nurse. Arraigned in Queens criminal court the next morning, Ms. Blair appeared drained and cried as she faced two counts of second-degree assault. She pleaded not guilty and was released on $20,000 bail. Aside from the broad outline of the incident, it is difficult to ascertain exactly what happened. Her attorney, Shawn Barnes, has characterized the incident as a “medical emergency,” while some MS sufferers have said her behavior suggests a tonic-clonic epilepsy seizure, often accompanied by severe disorientation and physical resistance.Though Ms. Blair has been in remission from MS since undergoing a stem-cell transplant in 2019, she still manages her symptoms with a regimen of medications. Her sobriety, which she has maintained for 10 years, began around the time of her initial MS diagnosis.I’m not writing this, however, to speculate about what happened. I’m struggling for an answer because it does not square with the woman I have just spent time with. On the flight in which the incident occurred, Selma Blair was flying back to New York for a photo shoot to accompany a profile I was writing about her for another publication. As part of the interview, I had spent well over four hours in her company: On the phone and over two-hour meeting at the Carlyle Hotel over coffee. I then watched as she delivered a riveting speech to the ADL at the Jewish Museum on October 1st, to announce her new documentary project on antisemitism, entitled “Hineni” or “Here I am.” The Selma Blair that I spoke to gave no hint of the upcoming disturbance to follow. Rather she was the film star; Hellboy’s girlfriend in the two Guillermo Del Toro blockbusters, the sniffy foil from “Legally Blonde,” the guileless sidekick in “The Sweetest Thing,” the rival therapist opposite Charlie Sheen in the sitcom “Anger Management”. She was lucid, warm, passionate, witty, frank, articulate, and thoughtful. Most of all she was funny. She strode into our meeting confident and fit, without the use of the cane that accompanied her for many of her earlier public appearances. She was steady on her feet and strong, a proper film star. But we were meeting not to discuss her past, but to close a recent chapter. Selma Blair hasn’t only had to weather a brutal challenge in her health; she has just been subjected to a full-on cancellation of her career that occurred in the wake of the October 7 massacre.It was an upending of her world so complete that it has driven her to start a new documentary project based on her experience. The controversy emerged around a single comment she left on a video by Abraham Hamra, a Jewish influencer from Syria who regularly advocates for Israel in both Hebrew and Arabic. Hamra called out representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) and Cori Bush (D-MO) for voting against an immigration bill barring October 7 participants from entering America. Ms. Blair, raised Jewish with extensive family and friends in Israel, heatedly commented in response to the story: “Deport all these terrorist supporting goons. Islam has destroyed Muslim countries and then they come here and destroy minds” she wrote, adding “They know they are liars. Twisted justifications. May they meet their fate.”Ms. Blair spent the afternoon with me describing the backlash to her comments. There were immediate accusations of Islamophobia. Thousands of strangers began calling her a hateful bigot and “genocide apologist.” Ms. Blair, who has never made a secret of her support for Israel, was alarmed at the firestorm and apologized within days. “I mistakenly and inadvertently conflated Muslims with Radical Islamists and fundamentalists, a terrible err in my words, and resulted in hurting countless people I never meant to, and I deeply regret this,” she wrote on Instagram.As heartfelt as it was, the apology did less than nothing. Further fallout arrived at breakneck speed. As she detailed in her speech to the ADL 12 days ago: “The brands I worked with were gone within a day….A few partnerships I’d spent years building were shelved. My agency was gone. My lawyer was gone. My publicist was gone. My book agent was gone. My book publicist was gone. My social media manager was gone. My son’s godmother was gone — my best friend. While some friends in the business quietly stood by me, most of them were gone. And of course, my manager, my supposed friend of 30 years, and a Jew, was gone too. I still don’t know what any of them were thinking. No one returned my calls.”The press coverage that followed was predictably unsparing. Deeply feeling and emotional at the best of times, she was struck profoundly by the sudden disavowal. “I was completely abandoned by the fashion community, which really hurt — I have always loved fashion” she told me when we met. “But even more it was the disability community, (with) whom I thought I had such a great relationship.” Ms. Blair had joined President Joe Biden on the White House lawn in 2023 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Now that was all for naught. Silence descended. Calls went unanswered. A stop payment was issued for work on a campaign she had already completed. Fellow celebrities ducked out of photos with her at events. Pleas for reasonable conversation, even a brief explanation, from people that had been central to her life for over three decades, went ignored. Selma Blair at ‘The Sweetest Thing’ premiere in New York, New York, United States. Sylvain Gaboury/FilmMagic via Getty Images“These were close, close friends of mine” she said. “They know how vulnerable I am, and they know how emotional trauma can trigger a relapse (of her MS). On some days I think that they did this on purpose, that they were hoping I would get sick again.” The controversy around her comment is more ironic considering that Mr. Hamra, who she was responding to, is himself is an outspoken Arab Jew. A Jewish woman, responding to the outrage of a Mizrahi Jew, found herself the object of silence from her largely non-Jewish Hollywood circle. And what a powerful circle it is. Hollywood stars such as Mark Ruffalo, Javier Bardem, Susan Sarandon have long employed antisemitic tropes far more problematic and extreme than Ms. Blair’s lone comment.In her long conversation with me, and in her fiery speech to the ADL, Blair stressed the inhuman amount of pressure she has undergone, accompanied by a degree of negativity and isolation she has never before experienced. She also spoke frankly about Hollywood’s seemingly impervious sense of their own righteousness when weighing in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:“There is an intellectual echo chamber at present, and we haven’t had an echo chamber this dangerous to the Jewish people since the ’40s,” she said. “In Hollywood, they really believe they are on the right side of history. They are stuck in an echo chamber that is difficult for them to break out of because it is reinforced by everyone around them, and to speak against it is to jeopardize their own safety, their own careers. But mostly, they are blind to it, because they truly believe they are on the right side of history.”Ms. Blair shook her head. “I’m reminded of the early red-green alliance in Iran—those college girls who were cheerleading the ayatollah and were among the first to be hanged,” she said. “And I worry about the long-term ramifications of this current trend: people not realizing what they are endorsing, all because they believe that they are morally good.”Her upcoming documentary project, which she announced in her address to the ADL, intends to speak directly to the experience of contemporary Jews, followed by an exploration of her own Jewish family history, and finally a return to Israel.“There is a tendency now to silence anyone who goes against the current activist narrative,” she said. “I’m not saying that any of the current Hollywood voices should be silenced either. Everyone should have a chance to talk. But I do wish there was an adult in the room… (to) fact check a few things.” Selma Blair and Charlie Sheen in ‘Anger Management.’ Via Prashant Gupta/FX NetworkIn her own memoir and last documentary, Ms. Blair has always been disarmingly frank about her own struggles. She is a dramatic figure, blessed with talent and success but also a fateful melancholy streak that she has wrestled in different forms since childhood. And as ugly and unfortunate as it may have been, Ms. Blair’s incident needs to be seen against the background of a similarly ugly and unfortunate climate for Jews across the world. Far more odious statements, many in frank solidarity with terror organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, are regularly aired on red carpets where expressing solidarity for the Palestinian cause is too often seen as a badge of honor.As Ms. Blair told me, “I want the world to know there is this whole group of people that feel unsafe and unheard, that things have reached a really difficult point…and now we want to stand up.”We’ll see what her upcoming hearing reveals, and no doubt in time we will hear more from Selma Blair herself since she has always been an open and transparent Hollywood presence. Until then, we should suspend judgement.

Exclusive: Selma Blair on Her Troubled Hollywood Post-October 7 Cancellation

Exclusive: Selma Blair on Her Troubled Hollywood Post-October 7 Cancellation

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