The Me Before You director, Thea Sharrock, has defended her film – which stars Game of Thrones’s Emilia Clarke as a woman who dates a disabled man who wishes to die – against campaigners who have called it a “disability snuff film”.
Sharrock, a British theatre director promoting her first film, told the Hollywood Reporter that she hadn’t anticipated a backlash and suggested that many people criticising the film hadn’t seen it or read Jojo Moyes’s book, on which it’s based.
“I have no problem with people seeing this film and not liking it for 101 different reasons; you go into every project with that as a possibility,” Sharrock said. “I understood going into it how vulnerable a topic it is and susceptible to very strong opinions. It has big themes in it that are very easy to make quick judgments on.”
In Me Before You, Clarke’s character, Lou, falls in love with Will (Sam Calflin), a quadriplegic man she is caring for. Before they met, Will had – spoilers ahead – decided he wanted to die rather than live as a disabled man. The film ends with Lou inheriting Will’s wealth after his assisted suicide.
Campaigners against the film, who protested at its premiere in London last week, have said the film glorifies the able-bodied character’s potential for adventure at the expense of the disabled man, who must die so she can live. On Twitter protesters using the hashtag #MeBeforeEuthanasia have attacked the film. “I’m not your inspiration porn and I’m not a thing to be pitied or killed off to make the audience cry,” wrote @grindmastrgrant.
“It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what the message is,” said Sharrock. “It’s a fictional story about how important the right to choose is. The message of the film is to live boldly, push yourself, don’t settle.”
Me Before You debuted in the US last week, taking $18.3M (£12.7m) in its opening weekend.
