Featured Image Credit: The Drew Barrymore Show/YouTube
Topics: Brooke Shields, Celebrity
Ali Condon
Drew Barrymore and Brooke Shields have admitted that they didn't feel they could speak up during the #MeToo movement.
The two stars agreed that they had been through so many 'inappropriate' experiences from such a young age that they couldn't figure out what they were and weren't accountable for.
Drew asked Brooke about her experiences with sexual harassment in the industry during her appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show this week.
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Explaining her thought process, Drew revealed that, when the #MeToo movement took off back in 2017, she felt 'like I didn't have a dog in that race' even though she had undoubtedly had some uncomfortable experiences from a young age.
"I didn't feel like I could speak to it because I experienced so many things that were so inappropriate at such a young age, that I'm so confused about what was I accountable for, what did I put myself into, where was I, was I a part of things? We were children," Drew told Brooke.
Agreeing with her mindset, Brooke revealed that she felt she couldn't add to the #MeToo movement because she really 'didn't know where I fell on the spectrum of it.'
She told the chat show host: "I don't know where to interpret my experiences because I was made to feel culpable, but at the same time, you victim shame yourself."
Seeming to hold back tears, Brooke continued: "But we were so young and it was appropriate that I couldn't feel sorry. I didn't even know. I didn't know what it was.
"And so, when it was called out to me as such, I was like, 'nope, nuh uh, no. Not going there. That did not happen'."
Leaning in toward Brooke with wide eyes, the Charlie's Angels star assured her: "That's exactly how I felt. I felt like I couldn't speak to the movement.
"I was so happy that it was happening but I felt like I experienced too many things that were so gray and so awkward and that I didn't know were wrong at the time. I guess, as an adult with hindsight, yes. As the mother of daughters..."
The Baby Face star agreed: "That's what helps with the perspective.
"But the ownership of it.. the ownership of the reality of it. I did not know how to handle any of that, so I just pushed it under the rug."
While Drew is mother to daughters Olive, 10, and Frankie, 8, Brooke has daughters Rowan, 19, and Grier, 16, with husband Chris Henchy.
Brooke has been speaking openly about how sexualised she was as a young girl in the industry in her new documentary, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.
When she was just 11-years-old, she starred in the 1978 film Pretty Baby as Violet, an abused child forced into prostitution.
And at 14-years-old, she appeared in Blue Lagoon, a film about two cousins who fall in love after being shipwrecked on an island.
Brooke has said that she had been forced to be partially nude for most of the movie, and filmmakers even tried to convince her to enter into an off-screen relationship with her then-18-year-old co-star, Christopher Atkins.
She has also addressed her mother's decision to have her pose nude for Playboy as a child.
The actor later told Drew that her mother, who died in 2012, was 'in love with her'.