Kate Winslet Responds to Fat Shaming 25 Years After ‘Titanic’
In a new podcast interview, the actress speaks out about mean fans and body-shaming trolls.
It’s a debate as old as time… or, at least a quarter of a century: Could Jack have survived if Rose had allowed him on the makeshift door raft with her?
As the blockbuster movie Titanic marks 25 years since it hit theaters, star Kate Winslet is putting some of the biggest rumors surrounding the classic film to rest. Among them is a claim that she was too big for Jack to fit on the raft with her.
In a new episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, the Oscar-winning actress reveals that fans have long used the iconic movie’s ending as a means to mock her weight.
“Apparently I was too fat,” Winslet shares. “Why were they so mean to me? They were so mean. I wasn’t even f*cking fat.”
Winslet’s character Rose’s love interest Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, succumbs to hypothermia in the film’s ending. (No spoilers here, you’ve had 25 years to see the flick, which is scheduled for a re-release in 4K in February 2023.)
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Winslet lashed back at trolls and reporters in the podcast, stating, “I would have said to journalists, I would have responded, I would have said, ‘Don’t you dare treat me like this. I’m a young woman, my body is changing, I’m figuring it out, I’m deeply insecure, I’m terrified, don’t make this any harder than it already is.’ That’s bullying, you know, and actually borderline abusive, I would say.”
This isn’t the first time in her career Winslet’s weight has come under scrutiny. The 47-year-old tells The Sunday Times she was relegated to “fat girl parts,” and her agents would regularly check in on her weight. “People are subject to scrutiny that is more than a young, vulnerable person can cope with,” the mom of three told The Times.
As for whether or not they would have actually fit on the floating door together, the film’s director James Cameron addressed that recently to the Toronto Sun.
“We have done a scientific study to put this whole thing to rest and drive a stake through its heart once and for all,” says Cameron. “We took two stunt people who were the same body mass of Kate and Leo and we put sensors all over them, and inside them, and we put them in ice water, and we tested to see whether they could have survived through a variety of methods, and the answer was, there was no way they both could have survived. Only one could survive.”
Well, there you have it, folks.
