Jon Hammthinks people should hold their judgments aboutRichard Jewelluntil after they see the movie.
Kevin Riley, editor at theAtlanta Journal-Constitutionwhere Scruggs worked, recently told PEOPLE there’s “no evidence” to support the implication.
Hamm, 48, thinks people should see the movie first before judging, as he argues the controversy has been taken out of context.
“I think that there were certainly suggestions of impropriety with her character, but there are also some suggestions of impropriety with the character that I play and that’s part of the tragedy of this story,” he added.
Scruggs broke the initial story that Jewell — a security guard at Centennial Olympic Park, heralded as a hero for discovering the explosive and alerting police before it detonated — was a suspect in the attack, which killed one and injured over a hundred people.
Rob Latour/Shutterstock
But Wilde, 35, who also defended the movie recently, argued that critics are sexualizing her character, and thinks it’s due to Scruggs’ gender.
“I have an immense amount of respect for Kathy Scruggs,” WildetoldThe Hollywood Reporter. “She’s no longer with us, she died very young, and I feel a certain responsibility to defend her legacy — which has now been, I think unfairly, boiled down to one element of her personality, one inferred moment in the film.”
Yet Riley, who didn’t work at theAtlanta Journal-Constitutionat the same time as Scruggs, still sees the portrayal as disrespectful to her image — and all female journalists.
“To persist in this idea that a female journalist only gets a big story this way is not only obviously completely untrue and insulting to all the women, frankly everybody in this profession but especially women, it’s just concerning” he added to PEOPLE. “I have trouble imagining why that storyline would need to be invented in order to get the powerful messages of what happened in this situation across.”
Richard Jewellis in theaters Friday.
source: people.com
