Charlize Theron attends the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar after party. | Photo by Toni Anne Barson/WireImage
While promoting her new action movie, The Old Guard, the Oscar-winning actress had much to say about Steven Seagal.
Charlize Theron visited Howard Stern’s radio show to promote her new action movie, The Old Guard, and the discussion turned to the topic of women fighting on film. Theron, who shares the same stunt trainer as Keanu Reeves, has earned respect from the stunt community and her directors for her dedication to stunt work. David Leitch, who directed Atomic Blonde, told Harper’s Bazaar, “She’s in the top one percentile of actors to do their own action. She’s f—— badass.”
When Stern asked where she got her inspiration for fight work, Theron said, “At night I’ll go online to watch fighters or watch people fight and you always come across that odd Seagal video of him ‘fighting’ in Japan, but he really isn’t.”
Theron continued, saying, “He’s just incredibly overweight and pushing people. He’s overweight and can barely fight … look it up, it’s ridiculous. He’s shoving people by the face. It’s a whole setup.”
But Theron’s sharpest criticism was reserved for Seagal’s treatment of women, earning the 90’s action star and former Louisiana cop a “F— you!” from the South African actress.
Seagal has been accused of sexual assault and rape from multiple women. Some, such as Portia de Rossi, have gone public with their allegations.
My final audition for a Steven Segal movie took place in his office. He told me how important it was to have chemistry off-screen as he sat me down and unzipped his leather pants. I? ran out and called my agent. Unfazed, she replied, “well, I didn’t know if he was your type.”
— Portia de Rossi (@portiaderossi) November 8, 2017
While the accusations from Hollywood actresses have become fairly well known, what is less often mentioned are statements from Seagal’s first wife. Left behind in Japan with their children while Seagal pursued both fame and Kelly LeBrock, Miyako Fujitano, herself a 7th Dan black belt in Aikido, went on record describing that time in her life. Seagal and Fujitano jointly owned a dojo in Japan, and when he left so did the students. “I had to start all over,” Fujitano describes in an interview posted on her dojo’s website. “It was very hard. Some days, I would go to teach class, and only one person would show up. On top of running the dojo, I had to raise my children. I don’t know how we got by. Sometimes we could only afford cheap brown rice for dinner.” Meanwhile, Seagal was scoring leading roles in movies like Above the Law (1988) and Hard to Kill (1989).
As Theron told Stern, Seagal “isn’t very nice to women.”
The Old Guard, based on the graphic novel of the same name, is a Netflix original and will be released July 10th.