Justine Bateman is calling out The Hollywood Reporter for its claim she is a “well-known supporter” of president-elect Donald Trump – a claim the outlet removed five hours after publishing it on Wednesday evening.
Bateman, speaking to TheWrap on Thursday morning, said it was an “unacceptable” and “tabloid-level” move by THR.
“I’ve been in the business for 40 years. I’m used to – years ago, when I was famous – The Inquirer and the Star and the Globe and all of that, [they] would do this sort of shit all the time, make stuff up all the time,” Bateman said. “I’ve never had it happen from an industry trade paper – so that I found completely unacceptable. That’s not how we do it in our business.”
On Wednesday, THR posted a brief story recapping Bateman’s appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show that same day. THR’s story included the following claim:
“Bateman is a well-known supporter of Trump, and frequently speaks out against those in Hollywood who criticize her for expressing her conservative views.”
To back up that claim, the story pointed to an X post Bateman made a few days after Trump defeated Kamala Harris in November in which Bateman said she was “decompressing from walking on eggshells for the past four years.”
But THR failed to mention that during her interview on Kelly’s show, Bateman said her recent comments about the current zeitgeist “is not a right or left [thing]. I mean, honestly, I’m not into politics at all.”
Bateman on Wednesday night called THR’s framing “wildly unacceptable” in an X post. THR later added an update to the bottom of its story at 11:06 p.m. — five hours after it was first published — and removed the section calling her a “well-known supporter” of Trump.
“An earlier version of this story reported that Bateman is a supporter of Trump,” THR’s update said. “She has not shared support for any presidential candidate in the 2024 election.”
Bateman, in her conversation with TheWrap, said she is not concerned with how someone votes.
“Those that are vocal supporters of Trump or Harris or whoever else, who cares? In our business, who cares?” Bateman said. “I want to know if you’re any good at what you do.”
She added: “I’m not on a team. I look at an individual. And yes, I vote, but it’s not a big focus in my life.”
She made similar comments during her appearance on Kelly’s show on Wednesday, saying how someone votes is “not even on the list” of things she considers when it comes to family and friends.
Bateman declined to tell TheWrap who she voted for in the 2024 election.
The former “Family Ties” star — who recently spoke at TheWrap’s The Grill conference about her upcoming AI-free film festival, Credo 23 — has garnered a lot of attention since Election Day for her criticism of the “mob mentality” she said has infected American culture in recent years.
She told Kelly the “the last eight years, and most acutely, the last four years, were f—ing unbearable. Unbearable. I never want to go through anything like that in my life again. I truly don’t. It was the most un-American situation I’ve ever been in.”
Bateman told TheWrap her recent comments are more spiritual than political, and that she only hoped the “oppressive” vibe that has swept Hollywood and much of the U.S. is dying out.
“I’m on the side of people being free to become their true selves. That’s the side I’m on,” she said. “And you can look at all of my films, my books, everything I’m writing, everything is about that. All of it is about that. That’s the common denominator. So people want to know what side I’m on. That’s the side I’m on. I want everybody to be free of fear, so that they can truly and completely become themselves.”
