Meryl Streep is taking movie review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes to task for a lack of female film critics.
Streep said that she counted up all of the male and female film critics on the site, which she said is often used by people to determine which movies to see.
“There are 168 women. And I thought that’s absolutely fantastic, and if there were 168 men it would be balanced,” Streep said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “If there were 268 men it would be unfair but I would be used to it, if there were 360, if there were 4 … actually there are 760 men who weigh in on the Tomatometer.”
Streep also said that the lack of female reviewers is negatively affecting the box office results of women-driven films. “The word isn’t disheartening. It’s infuriating,” she said.
“I submit to you that men and women are not the same, they like different things,” she continued. “Sometimes they like the same thing, but sometimes their tastes diverge. If the Tomatometer is slighted so completely to one set of tastes that drives box office in the United States, absolutely.”
Streep made the comments while promoting her new movie “Suffragette,” which details the women’s rights movement in Britain. In the film Streep plays Emmeline Pankhurst, who coined the phrase “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave.”