Kristen Stewart, Who's Never Been Wrong in Her Life, Says Hollywood Only Likes 4 Female Directors

This week, Kristen Stewart appeared on the cover of PORTER magazine, and, as we've all come to expect of a KStew cover story, she looked super hot and said some very astute, deliciously acerbic things about Hollywood. The interview has Stewart mostly sounding off on movie-making, from the success of her latest film, Love Lies Bleeding ("I think we were shocked that we could even get this made") to the kinds of stories she suspects film-goers want to see ("I think maybe people wanna watch movies about, like, Jesus and dogs"). But her most searing introspections about the industry arrived while discussing her directorial debut. Stewart will soon begin production of an adaptation of The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch's 2011 memoir in which addiction, self-destruction, and childhood sexual abuse are explored (and assuaged) by competitive swimming. “My movie is about incest and periods and a woman violently repossessing her voice and body, and it is, at times, hard to watch," Stewart told the magazine. (Note: I will be there opening weekend.) "But it’s gonna be a fucking thrill ride. And I think that’s commercial, but I don’t think that I have any gauge on what that means.” Perhaps a clue that the film is anything but commercial is the fact that—as Stewart notes elsewhere in the interview—it was absurdly difficult to secure its funding. In January, she even threatened the industry writ-large that she'd quit acting if the project didn't get financing. “It’s kind of a self-conscious thing to talk about because it’s hard to get anything made," Stewart said before taking aim at the Hollywood suits who decide what stories get told (and the pitiful number of female directors who get to tell them). "It’s easy for them to be like, 'Look what we’re doing. We’re making Maggie Gyllenhaal’s movie! We’re making Margot Robbie’s movie!'" "And you’re like, OK, cool. You’ve chosen four…" she continued. "And I’m in awe of those women, I love those women [but] it feels phony." When even less than four women have ever won an Oscar for Best Director? Stand on business! And that's exactly what she did. "[There's a] thinking that we can check these little boxes, and then do away with the patriarchy, and how we’re all made of it," Stewart said. "If we’re congratulating each other for broadening perspective, when we haven’t really done enough, then we stop broadening." This conversation, of course, isn't the first time she's skewered the many social and political confines—for women, but for queer people, too—in the industry and outside of it. Of her famed Rolling Stone cover—an instant pin-up for queers (and straights) everywhere—Stewart adeptly summed up why it received so much backlash from conservatives and right-wingers. In case you rightfully memory-holed the controversy, Libs of TikTok went so far as to call the shoot “disgusting” and cited it as evidence of the entertainment industry imposing a big gay agenda. “I think there’s a certain overt acknowledgment of like, a female sexuality that has its own volition in a way that’s annoying for people who are sexist and homophobic,” Stewart told Stephen Colbert during an appearance on The Late Show. “Female sexuality isn’t supposed to actually want anything but to be had. And that feels like it’s protruding in a way that might be annoying. But fuck you.” Wherever there's a "fuck you" from KStew, you'll find me there.