Julia Roberts is starring in a new film that co-stars Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield called After The Hunt, which chronicles the blowback of a sexual assault accusation in a university. The film obviously tackles the themes of Me Too, but when an Italian journalist sat down with the three and wanted to know their thoughts on Black Lives Matter and Me Too, she decided that she didn’t need Edebiri’s answer.
The story has gained traction on social media, and it’s one of those “you have to see it to believe it” scenarios. In the interview, Federica Polidoro sits off-screen and asks the three stars a question that, in all fairness, seems relevant to the film: what to expect from Hollywood after “the death of the politically correct era.” She zeroes in specifically on the Me Too movement and, for some reason, the Black Lives Matter movement. One would assume it’s because Edebiri is a Black woman and plays the sexual assault survivor in After The Hunt, but no — Polidoro specifically says she only needs an answer from Roberts and Garfield.
Roberts, Edebiri, and Garfield immediately caught on, with all three stars scoffing in shock and seeming disgust. Yahoo! reports Roberts took the lead as probably the biggest star in the room and asked, “Um, can you repeat that?” Edebiri, to her credit, just took the slight in stride, took over the question, and responded to Polidoro that just because the movements are not based on social media hashtags anymore doesn’t mean they’re “dead,” despite what Elon Musk and his cohorts would have you believe. The other two stars simply echoed Edebiri’s thoughts and tried to maintain a semblance of decorum, even if it wasn’t offered by the journalist, who was seemingly conducting the interview while wearing sunglasses.
Ayo Edebiri eloquently talks about the political state of the hashtag “Me Too” & the Black Lives Matter movement after being deliberately excluded from the question by an interviewer for their ‘After the Hunt’ press tour.
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) September 7, 2025
pic.twitter.com/KyoLoLU1lP
Journalists, interviewers — everyone really — is prone to making a mistake. Sometimes they ask stars questions that are out of line or simply don’t do enough research. Edebiri is a fairly new star who has only recently made a name for herself in the Emmy-winning The Bear, so yes, maybe her name wouldn’t pull as much of a moment as the other two. But this was simply out of line. Some people online even read it as racist.
The Italian journalist did herself no favors when she decided to issue a non-apology on her Instagram stories. According to her, the people critiquing her interviewing style were trying to censor her — which is ironic, because she literally requested Edebiri’s silence in that very interview. She also assured followers that she can’t be racist because her family is “multi-ethnic” and “feminist.”
Italian journalist Federica Polidoro, who excluded Ayo Edebiri from a BLM & MeToo question to Julia Roberts & Andrew Garfield at the Venice Film Festival, has issued a statement on Instagram. pic.twitter.com/PzAkimglyO
— Louis Pisano (@LouisPisano) September 7, 2025
Arguments about who can and who can’t be considered racist will forever create a muddy conversation. But the point here has grown beyond that, and people online are now simply asking interviewers to respect actors during these press tours. If someone is sitting in front of a journalist for an interview, asking them to then be silent isn’t just unprofessional — it’s also rude.
In a sense, what the interview did reveal, however, was that the idea of a political and cultural shift where people will just allow disrespect is false. So perhaps her line of questioning was necessary and revelatory after all.
After The Hunt will hit theaters nationwide on Oct. 10.
