Actress Whitney Moore has spoken out regarding the “horrific, inhumane” abuse she suffered during her relationship with screenwriter and director Max Landis.
On Tuesday, Moore posted that she “never thought I would say anything publicly about the things Max Landis did to me because I believed that forgiveness was the correct way to heal.” She says she kept quiet and defended Landis because she thought he was trying to be a better person: “Now I know that this was a lie; he never got any better. He hid behind his friendship with me and several other good people so he could continue hurting people behind closed doors and not be questioned.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BylVhlcnH7K/
Moore did not get into specific details, but other women have. In February, another accuser came forward with her account of 2012 sexual assault by Landis, in a now-deleted Medium essay. The accuser claimed she and others had given their accounts to the Hollywood Reporter in 2017, but the publication declined to move forward with the story.
Allegations about Landis’ behavior have existed online for years, but there has yet to be an all-encompassing takedown with accusers on the record. In late 2017, when Netflix was about to release the critically panned Bright, which he wrote, there was a concentrated effort to put a spotlight on his predatory behavior, and more people came forward with allegations of assault and abuse.
Landis disappeared for a while, but he reemerged earlier this year with two new scripts already in production, which signaled that Hollywood is still willing to accommodate predators with famous fathers (his father, John Landis, is a famous film director). Chloë Grace Moretz, who is set to star in one of the films, Shadow in the Cloud, told the Guardian in April that that script had been “rewritten” and that Max Landis’ “name is kind of far away from the project.”
https://twitter.com/rachelkiley/status/1090664621613240325
https://twitter.com/alicialutes/status/1138686602039873536
Max Landis has been outed multiple, multiple times over a span of YEARS as an abusive piece of shit, IN ADDITION to being repeated, proven box office poison, and at this moment he has several multi-million-dollar projects in development. And that's why this industry is broken.
— Matt Wallace is Updates Only (@MattFnWallace) June 12, 2019
https://twitter.com/thbrogan/status/1138679534784401408
Max Landis (@uptomyknees), son of John, has been failing upward with horrible scripts/movies FOR YEARS, coasting on his father’s name instead of actual talent. He & I tangled #OnHere in 2016 about representation. Happy to see more are learning what a horrible person he is. pic.twitter.com/dG6nNLmE7s
— April (@ReignOfApril) June 12, 2019
Moore noted in her Instagram that there would be “more to come” but that she would be detailing her experience “anonymously because the things he did to me are too humiliating for me to feel ok having my name attached to them.”
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H/T Pajiba