Batman is in Meryl Streep’s corner.
Ben Affleck defended the actress on Monday night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” by saying, “If there’s one thing, truly, in the world that we know is not true, it’s that Meryl Streep is overrated.”
Streep bashed President-elect Donald Trump without saying his name during her Cecile B. DeMille Award acceptance speech at the Golden Globes on Sunday night. Trump fired back on Twitter, calling the actress overrated.
Affleck said calling Streep “overrated” is like to calling Gandhi “a terrible leader.”
“It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back,” Streep said, referring to an incident with Trump on the campaign trail. “It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.”
“[This] instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing,” the “Florence Foster Jenkins” actress continued. “Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Streep also called on Hollywood to support a free and independent press as we find ourselves entering the Trump era. “We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage,” she said. “That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution.”
Her comments have been extremely polarizing, drawing praise from liberals and ripped by conservatives.
Watch the video above.