All About Change - Brett Gelman - Hollywood Speaking out Against Antisemitism

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Brett Gelman is best and more recently known for his work on shows like Fleabag and Stranger things, but the actor has been around for years. Throughout his career he’s also been a vocal advocate against antisemitism and Jewish inclusion in Hollywood. Following the October 7 attacks, Brett stepped up his activism and has been a steadfast supporter of the Israeli victims of the massacre, making visits to hospitals in the days following, sharing their stories on social media, and recentering the conversation.   Brett joined host Jay Ruderman for a conversation about his Jewish upbringing, being a public figure who speaks out, his latest book, to his desire to see more Jewish inclusion in Hollywood.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaking out for our people, for my own people. I was like, well, if I'm going to speak out for other groups, I don't speak out for mine. That's all too Jewish in the wrong way. Hi, I'm Jay Ruderman and welcome to All About Change, a podcast showcasing individuals who leverage the hardships that have been thrown at them to better other people's lives. I say put mental health first because if you don't... This generation of Americans has already had enough. I stand before you not as an expert, but as a concerned citizen. Brett Gellman's been part of some of the most popular series over the past few years, with prominent roles in both Fleabag and Stranger Things.

But he's also a dogged advocate for Israel in the wake of the October 7th attacks. I've always spoken out for causes that I believe in. I think that that's just a part of who I am. In the days following the attack, Brett visited hospitals in Israel and spoke to victims. We felt like this deep need very early on, like just to go there and to help, to show our support in the physical body. So, you know, we knew that we were going to be talking about it. And so, you know, some of it was putting your money where your mouth is, you know, and to be like, I'm here, I'm seeing it.

In the time since, Bretz received pushback for his stance. Several stops along the press tour for his upcoming book, The Terrifying Realm of the Possible Nearly True Stories, have been canceled due to safety concerns. If you're trying to defame my character in that way, you're further trying to dox me. So I wonder, even if it is a security issue, you folding to that is folding to anti-Semitic pressure. And where does that end? In spite of all this, Brett stands firm in his beliefs, advocating for more Jewish inclusion in Hollywood. You know, when I'm trying to get a role and somebody's like, oh, well, they don't want any more white people, that's anti-Semitic.

You know, I don't think people know that it is. But when I get framed as white, that is because I'm not white. White people hate me too. White people hate us too. So there's a lot of subtle things that's playing into this really disgusting aspect of progressive thought that has completely removed the Jew as a marginalized person. So Brett Gellman, thank you so much for being my guest on All About Change. Thank you, Jay. Thank you for having me. If I could start off in the beginning, tell us a little bit about your childhood in Illinois. You've spoken about how formative your Jewish faith has been to you.

What was it like growing up in Highland Park? I wouldn't say that my faith was formative as much as the culture of being a Jew. I mean, obviously, there's ways in which going to temple and celebrating the holidays and learning about our customs and traditions definitely shaped me, but I was a very reformed Jew. I didn't grow up very religious at all. My family was not very religious. But Hammond Park, Illinois, is a predominantly Jewish

suburb on the North Shore of Chicago. And so it's just, I mean, being Jewish was really mostly what I knew in terms of my day-to-day, in terms of the people that I was absorbing, you know, the culture that I was a part of, am a part of. And how did you eventually move into comedy? How did I eventually move into comedy? I watched A Night at the Opera when I was six years old, which is a Marx Brothers movie, and that made me obsessed and formed the rest of my life

and its decisions. So, you know, I took the normal routes that like a kid who wants to be a comedian and actor take. I went to a theater camp, took childhood acting classes, got very involved in the high school theater department. Went to a classical training conservatory for college. Then once I graduated there and moved to New York,

I joined an improv sketch comedy theater called the Upright Citizens Brigade. And I pretty much have that theater to thank for my career. It gave me a constant place to showcase myself and to perform. So, Brett, I want to ask you, you worked for years in entertainment, and then Stranger Things and Fleabag come along, and you've really taken off and you have a fan base and an audience. What does that transition, how did that feel to you?

So like I had like steady work leading up to those jobs, but with both of these shows, I certainly, it's different. It was different in terms of like, I mean, Fleabags reception, especially season two, doing that awards tour, winning all of the awards, feeling like you were in the show that was everybody's favorite show. I mean, it felt like at the Emmys and the Globes and the Critics' Choice Awards, SAG Awards,

that not only did people think that we were the best show, but they wanted us to win. I remember when like Maisel got the best ensemble award at the SAG awards and they were like, why isn't this not being given a fleabag, you know? Uh, cause that was the one, like the only like big award that we didn't win. And I'm not talking smack about Maisel here. I'm just saying that's what they said. I think that that's an ingenious cast and an incredible show.

And then with Stranger Things, which is also justifiably considered one of the best shows of all time, but it's a very different show. And a very different, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, it's crazy when you take a breath and you realize, oh my God, I'm like in the equivalent of what Star Wars was to me when I was growing up. Right. And to feel that like, yeah, it's the biggest level of fame I've ever felt.

You know, no matter where I go in the world, I have fans and that's wild. So I wanted to ask you, because you are very outspoken and you are an activist, once you have that audience, once you have that platform, how do you use it? I've always spoken out for causes that I believe in. I think that's just a part of who I am. I'm somebody who is really inspired by artists who engaged in political discourse growing up and social discourse. I've always had that counterculture aspect to me.

My parents were hippies, so I remember very much idolizing what they did, even though my parents were more on the rock and roll side of it. That was the activism side. did, you know, even though my parents were more on the on the rock and roll side of it. Unless the activism side. But yeah, I remember like, you know, just people who I looked up to, you know, and got really into when I was in high school, just people like fellow Jewish sages like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin to Lenny Bruce, you know, to Bob Dylan, you know. And so that just always felt like it was a part of me, you know. So yeah, I have always spoken out

against injustices towards marginalized people and have tried to educate myself in how where those unconscious biases have lived in me. When this happened on the 7th, even prior to the 7th, I started speaking out for our people, for my own people. I was like, well, if I'm going to speak out for other groups, and I don't speak out for mine, that's all too Jewish in the wrong way. That is the essence of the self-hating Jew.

Right. I want to get into that a little bit deeper, but first I want to talk about you have a book that's coming out or came out, called The Terrifying Realm of the Possible, Nearly True Stories. Yes. What's the book about and why are some of your appearances being canceled? It is a book of short stories. They revolve around five characters, a child and teenager,

an adult and older woman, and a person in the afterlife. It's very darkly comedic and it's very culturally Jewish. It's very influenced by a lot of my heroes. And it's literature that I didn't feel like we're really seeing anymore, which was just very hard-hitting, urban Jewish neurosis. And it's a very hilarious, in my opinion,

purge of my self-hatred and all of my issues that are flowing around in my head. And since I've been outspoken, I've gotten attacked constantly by pro, or I should say anti-Jewish, anti-Israel protesters. I don't like to call them pro-Palestinian because I don't think that they're helping the Palestinians either. But yeah, they started calling to, you know, I'm doing a book tour, which is custom that you go around

when you have a book coming out. You go to certain cities, you go to bookstores to do appearances, maybe read something, do some meet and greets, sign some books. And some of these protesters called some of these bookstores and intimidated them and got them to pull out

of hosting me. So do you think it's a security issue or do you think it's more anti-Semitic? On the bookstore's part, you mean? Their motivation for pulling out? I mean, I have no idea. They said it's a security issue. I can't call them a liar. I mean, well, one store, the book passage after they thought that I was calling them anti-Semitic

when I did an article with the New York Post, I was not. I was calling the protesters anti-Semitic. So, me thinks she protests too much. Because I wasn't calling the book stores that. So, I wonder, I mean, even if it is a security issue, you folding to that is folding to anti-Semitic pressure. And where does that end? So there is some anti-Semitism wrapped up in their cancellation. You know, and some of the stores, I think have Jewish owners, but hey, you know, plenty of Jews, as we saw last night at the Oscars, fully

have the ability to be anti-Semitic. Right. All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present, not to say, look what they did then, rather look what we do now. Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.

Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all are victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist? And how do you take that? You know, a guy wins an award for a movie about the Holocaust and then says, you know, I want to apologize for my Jewishness and using the Holocaust for a genocide of a people. How did you take that? It was really, it made me very angry and it was heartbreaking. And it's just, at best, so incredibly irresponsible of him to do that. I'm not saying that people don't have a right to criticize the Israeli government. I certainly have and do, you know,

but in terms of this conflict, the fact that just, you know, the people who started it and have designed this conflict in order for so many innocent Palestinians to die. The fact that they're not called out anymore, it just shows that this is at least unconscious anti-Semitism. In the case of Mr. Glazer, I mean, that was really like, that is a filmmaker who I really admire artistically. It's somebody who, you know, was on the top of my list of directors I would want to work with. That name has obviously been removed. I mean, it's a completely disgusting,

self-hating, really insensitive act. And to refute your Jewishness, to completely remove the pain. It's an erasure. It's such a profound erasure of Jewish pain. It's a profound denial of how many Holocaust survivors live in Israel or lived in Israel or only found peace after the atrocities that what his movie was made about live in Israel. It shows that like you're making that movie as an intellectual exercise, not at all from a true place of empathy.

It's his narcissism playing out to the most extreme degree, not only in that speech, but showing the whole making of that film. The whole making of that film is wrong if that is his perspective. To top it all off, you had those pins everywhere. I mean, somebody who was even one of the actors, I don't remember his name from Zone of Interest, was wearing the Palestinian flag, a French actor, you know, if any of these people were Palestinian, by the way, I would have been like, OK, I get it.

If any of these people were Palestinian, by the way, I would have been like, okay, I get it. You know, but the complete erasure of us by these people and them thinking that they're standing up for social justice, while they're completely dehumanizing us and thus creating an even bigger divide in the midst of this conflict, culturally. Right. And so, yeah, anyway, I could go on and on, but it upset me. divide in the midst of this conflict culturally. Right. So I want to... Yeah. Anyway, I could go on and on, but it upset me.

It upset me. I want to ask you about your industry, about the entertainment industry, because it seems to me that there are few like yourself, Deborah Messing, Jerry Seinfeld, who made a visit to Israel and others, but there are many that are silent. What makes someone like you speak out and say, you know, this is wrong, this is an attack, this is the worst attack on my people since the Holocaust, and others just to sort of like, just stay silent?

What do I think of the silence? I mean, that was the other thing that was incredibly disappointing last night. The fact that nobody got up and said anything to speak the truth. And I know that there are people in that room who agree with you and I, who see it in the way that we do. I was at Oscar party, you know, Oscar parties all weekend. And I had people come up and thank me.

But then I had a lot of those same people who were coming up and thanking me, asking me like, you know, should I wear the yellow ribbon? I have clients who don't agree with me. What do I do? And I'm like, you know, that's your choice. I mean, uh, if your clients are so against you that you supporting your people would jeopardize your business with them. I don't see how you can be in business with them.

I honestly don't. And so, yeah, there is a cowardice happening in Hollywood right now. I think that part of the Jewish identity, unfortunately, in Hollywood is based on assimilation. You know, we built this industry and but then we built it in the way to serve American culture, tried to assimilate into American culture and give people what we thought would sell. They had life experience of seeing that nobody except the Jewish people had interest in the Jewish people. So it makes sense that from that traumatized place they assimilated.

But we're in a different world now, and it needs to be different. I think also it was this total giving over to identity politics that a lot of Jews in Hollywood began to believe that the things that they were being told that people who were brainwashed by this propaganda started to tell them was that we were white oppressors who benefited from white privilege,

who ran Hollywood. And so a lot of people took off that identity. And even if they didn't agree with it, became very afraid, because liberal culture runs Hollywood. And I agree with that. I agree with lots of aspects of identity politics. I just don't agree with the fact that we are not included and I also

don't agree with if you call a terrorist a terrorist for being Islamophobic. Those are the two things I don't agree with. The thing that I don't understand, I mean I understand calling for a ceasefire. I mean listen there's atrocities all mean, listen, there's atrocities all over the world. There's wars being fought all over the world that are barely talked about. But I understand, you know, calling for a ceasefire. What I don't understand is, no one is saying, but Hamas needs to be eradicated. They're committed to the destruction of Israel, to the Jewish people. That needs to be part of it.

And that part is not being said. And that I find to be very disturbing. Yeah, I want a ceasefire. Absolutely. I don't want innocent Palestinians to die anymore at all. But we need to have our hostages back. And yeah, Hamas needs to be eradicated for the state of Israel and the Jewish people, and also the Palestinian people, you know, who are completely oppressed by that iron fist, who are abused. You know, they're living under a completely

oppressive regime. So when these people talk about Palestinian self-determination, and they're living under a completely oppressive regime. So when these people talk about Palestinian self-determination and they're not talking against the very entity that is oppressing them, they're not even including them in the conversation along with Israel. Sure, talk about Israel, Netanyahu regime's injustices towards Palestinians and towards Israelis and Jews. But if you're not including Hamas in that, it's not a fully conceived perspective. Right.

I want to bring you back to October 7th. And just if you can talk about your experience that day, what went through your mind, you know, what were you thinking when you learned about it? It was, I woke up and a friend of mine was like, hey, I think something's going on in Israel right now. And it was not the first time I got that text from somebody, you know. And my fiance is Israeli-American, so all of her best friends are in Israel, a lot of her family's in Israel, and they've become my family and a lot of my best friends. So immediately we thought of them and are they safe?

You know, and started reaching out to them and thankfully they were. It's wild because my birthday's on the sixth and hers is on the eighth. So we were like, oh, just for, you know, just for fun, let's go to Vegas on the seventh. And as we were driving to Vegas it was unfolding you know we're listening to news the whole way we could hardly process it on the 7th it was so

surreal you just sort of felt like this giant tidal wave of tragedy was smashing into you to where it was almost was almost numbing and then we got to Vegas and we're like what the hell are got to Vegas and we were like, what the hell are we doing here? And we did our best we could to sort of go through the motions a little bit and got out of there the next day as early as possible. It just was like, it felt like we were spinning

and didn't really totally know what to do. And so, yeah, and what happened was a deep dark depression and fear. And then you saw the footage and the accounts, and it's the worst thing that I've ever experienced. Right. I always wonder, you know, the film that has been put out, which clearly shows which Hamas film themselves of beheading people and raping gang raping women and burning babies alive If Israel had released that to the general public and just said okay

You want to see what they did here everyone in the world see what they did? I Wonder if that would have changed opinions or if people would have just you know found a way to say, you know something I still hold Israel responsible. I wonder too. I wonder too. You know, because I wish that we would have been able to. Because at least we would have seen what that would have done. Seen the reaction.

I do think that there are people who still wouldn't have cared. Really, people are not really taking responsibility and total account for how much anti-Semitism is just baked into culture of the world. If you are not a Jew, how much you have the possibility of hating us. How much that possibility is, is in your brain is in your like DNA. Yeah, I mean, you know, and saw these many reactions of when I saw the screenings being put together in like LA, for instance, and then the protests that people in the industry saying, you know, a specific person in the industry saying that it was propaganda and

fake. I mean, it's just, yeah, but I do think that maybe if we were able to release that more fully across social media, in the way that footage of the bombing has been released, there would have been more of a pause in the rhetoric people were using and the narratives they were painting. Do you feel in your industry, in entertainment, that you experience anti-Semitism? Yeah, I think to some degree I do. Yeah, absolutely. I think, again, it's that, oh, you're white thing. I mean, Michael Rapoport has said it, there's not a lot of Jewish movie stars.

I mean, Michael Rapaport has said it, there's not a lot of Jewish movie stars. And there's not Jewish stories being told unless it's about the Holocaust. I also think that in a slow way, like Jewish culture, even in the ways that we love it, you know, that classic misanthropic archetype, you know, of, you know,

Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld and Albert Brooks and Woody Allen has been demonized as well or sort of just condescended to, you know, and that's a very important aspect of American Jewish culture. That's something that I very much value. Right. I do think, yeah, I mean, I see how people describe my characters sometimes, and it feels a little more critical than I wonder if a non-Jewish actor was playing them. They would be criticized in the way, talked about in the way that mine are by some people, you know, when they call them disgusting. And yet Travis Bickle is very complicated.

And yeah, I mean, when we're talking about roles, when I'm trying to get a role and somebody's like, oh, well, they don't want any more white people, that's anti-Semitic. I don't think people know that it is, but it's not anti-Semitic to say they want a black or brown person or a person of color to play this role. That's not anti-Semitic. But when I get framed as white, that is because I'm not white.

White people hate me too. White people hate us too. Yeah, and I think that we were removed in Hollywood from the cultural conversation and from the marginalized table. And we were recognized as part of the white oppressive body where we sought at the Academy Museum. There's no mention of the founders of Hollywood in the history of Hollywood at the Academy Museum. They left us out. They left out-

And they had to remedy that. Yeah. So there's a lot of subtle things that's playing into this really disgusting aspect of progressive thought that has completely removed the Jew as a marginalized person. Are you concerned about your career that because you're outspoken that you may receive fewer roles in the future? Or are you concerned about your safety because you're outspoken that you may receive fewer roles in the future or you're concerned about

your safety because you're outspoken on social media and social media tends to be a very vile place where anyone can lash back at you. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I'm lucky that my collaborators who I work with now are very supportive, whether it's who I'm like working on projects with or my team are all very supportive. So I don't know if it's lessened my opportunities

or not in that way. I don't know what's being said to me. You know, Hollywood's a very fake place a lot of the time. People telling you one thing to your face and then saying something behind your back. You're not usually going to get called out at a Hollywood party for having a different perspective. You're just going to get ignored and snubbed and be left to wonder if the reason you're

being ignored is because of who you are and what you think. But and then my safety, I mean, yeah, I get death threats every day. I get death threats every day. I get death threats every day. However, I also think that it's important to realize that social media is very much, for the most part, just this fever dream that we've all bought into it as reality, which isn't actual reality at all a lot of the time, whether it's the bots who are coming at us or the echo chambers we find ourselves in. So it's, you know, I take it seriously and at the same time I try not to take it too seriously. I wanted to ask you about visiting Israel after October 7th.

Why was that important to you and what did you gain from visiting victims in the hospital And what did you gain from visiting victims in the hospital and hearing from people who suffered directly because of October 7th? Well, it was important. We really wanted to see our friends and family and offer them comfort and get comfort from them too. They live in a much clearer world than we do. And we just, I mean, we felt like this deep need very early on, like just to go there and to help, to show our support in the physical body.

So, you know, we knew that we were going to be talking about it. And so, you know, some of it was putting your money where your mouth is, you know, and just be like, I'm here, I'm seeing it. I'm seeing how people are actually affected by this. It was to serve, to offer our support to hostage families, Nova survivors, displaced peoples, and give them a voice and tried to amplify Israel's humanity. And it was also to be healed by that clarity that Israel has

and be healed by being in a place where you didn't have to explain your thoughts or feelings to anyone. Everybody is experiencing that with you. And that was really essential. I mean, when you talk about my mental health, that definitely helps with that. So I want to ask you about a couple of letters that you've signed. One, we talked about this briefly about Jewish representation in Hollywood

and talking, you know, including Jews as a distinct minority that deserve to be represented. And the other letter to TikTok saying, hey, you're overly anti-Semitic. Are you receiving answers to these letters? Is it moving the needle? No. No, I don't think it is at all. I, no, I think, I think that we have to change our tactics more here. I think we still are wanting to frame this in some way that we think it's going to elicit empathy from people who

just don't have it, and that we have to get a little more forceful with our message, and stand up to this bullying, and that we have to get a little more, a little more forceful with our message and stand up to this bullying and stand up to this one sided, miseducated, misinformed messaging that's coming at us so frequently. And we need to get louder. I really would love more people who agree to us,

Jews and allies alike, to get louder for our side, for the side of truth. Because it's not only for Jews, it's for democracy, it's for analytic thinking, it's for freedom of speech, it's for all of these things. It's for the whole, to bring us back to a culture of conversation move. So, anyway, I just think these letters and these events, they're great. And maybe they're effective. I hope they are. I certainly will continue to sign them and support them. But I think that we definitely need to do more. This needs to be more of a movement. I heard Naftali Bennett,

former Prime Minister of Israel, I mean, I was next to him. He was speaking and he was saying, I don't know how much we can change minds, but we need to have strength and solidarity in ourselves. Not only in how we fight this messaging, but like, what is our culture? What are all the different aspects of our culture?

Let's put that out there. Let's wear that with pride. Let's be that. Let's be more forceful and less afraid. I mean, you can't control your fear. I mean, I'm certainly afraid. But I mean, at a certain point, when do we when do we start protesting the protesters and start showing these bullies that they're bullies? So many of these people are bullies. Right. So I'm not talking about violence. But in a nonviolent way, let's march. You know, you bring it up and I have people in our own community being like, well, we don't have the

numbers. I'm like, I don't know, I was in Washington and I saw a pretty hefty number. Right. So, Brett, I want to just finally ask you, you know, where's the line between being critical of a policy of the Israeli government and being anti-Semitic? First of all, I do question the subcession with Israel. The fact that people have no skin in the game talk about this conflict and don't talk about the many other injustices that are going on in the world right now, it's very suspect to me. So I think there's something anti-Semitic in that, in making Israel the only international situation that you have any interest in, and it always being about criticizing Israel. I think that there's anti-Semitism wrapped up in that. But I certainly believe that Israel's government deserves a lot of criticism. I'm no fan of its

current regime. I don't think that they've been good for anybody. Criticizing that is not inherently anti-Semitic, but it so quickly rolls into the whole country, it so quickly rolls into a conversation, a conversation leading to the eradication of Israel's existence, you know? Right. And so that's deeply anti-Semitic, that Israel is the only country that no matter what its government is people call, you know for its end and That's just you know, a deeply deeply cartoonishly anti-semitic if you're going to go so far as to

Call Hamas resistance. Well, then you shouldn't be able to understand the then you shouldn't be able to understand the popularization of a right-wing regime. Maybe that is somewhat of a result of Israel being attacked and the horror and terror that Israelis experience. Some of them being brainwashed into voting for a right wing regime like that. That's a reaction to something too. So that you're not analyzing this whole thing and you have no knowledge of Israeli culture. You demonize the whole culture, you demonize the whole people. You question and criticize Israel's conception.

This is all anti-Semitic. We used to be able to look at the complex and go, Oh my God, this is horrible. You know, that's how we used to define it. And now it's this, uh, complete attack on the one Jewish state, which is not all Jewish. You know, there's lots of other people living there. So it's not only attack on Jews, it's an attack on all Israelis, no matter what their culture and faith. Well, Brett, I want to thank you for being articulate, for your strong stand against

anti-Semitism in support of Jewish people, especially when there are many people in your industry who are not willing to take that stand. So I don't take that, and I don't think many people take that for granted. I wish you much success in your career and I hope that you go from strength to strength. And I know you're a comedian and this was not a very funny conversation, but I think it was an important conversation. But thank you so much for being my guest on All About Change and keep on keeping up the good fight. Thank you. You too, Jay. Thank you so much for having me.

Brett Gellman's dedication to speaking out, particularly in the face of such backlash, is admirable. And I wish him all the best as he goes forward. That's it for today's episode. Join us two weeks from today for my talk with disability advocate and author, Shane Burkow. Today's episode was produced with story editing by Yochai Meytal and Mijan Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We'd really appreciate it. All About

Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation in partnership with pod people. That's all for now. I'm Jay Ruderman and we'll see you next time on All About Change.