EXCLUSIVE: Emmy winner Julianna Margulies says she is “horrified” by the reaction to a series of statements she had made about Black and LGBTQ Americans, largely college students.
“I am horrified by the fact that statements I made on a recent podcast offended the Black and LGBTQIA+ communities, communities I truly love and respect,” Margulies said in an exclusive statement to Deadline. “I want to be 100% clear: Racism, homophobia, sexism, or any prejudice against anyone’s personal beliefs or identity are abhorrent to me, full stop. Throughout my career I have worked tirelessly to combat hate of all kind, end antisemitism, speak out against terrorist groups like Hamas, and forge a united front against discrimination. I did not intend for my words to sow further division, for which I am sincerely apologetic.”
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Margulies, who is Jewish, made the controversial comments on The Back Room with Andy Ostroy podcast where she railed against support for Palestine. The statements drew major backlash Thursday after audio clips from the interview were posted on X/Twitter.
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At one point, Ostroy commented that “people hate Jews,” then briefly talked about the pervasiveness of antisemitism in the U.S., and suggested there’s more of an uproar over using “the wrong pronouns on college campuses.”
“Oh my god, forget it,” Margulies replied. “It’s those kids who are spewing this antisemitic hate that have no idea if they stepped foot in an Islamic country—these people who want us to call them they/them, or whatever they want us to call them… it’s those people that will be the first people beheaded and their heads played with like a soccer ball, like a soccer ball on the field. And that’s who they’re supporting? Terrorists who don’t want women to have their rights? LGBTQ people get executed.”
She also claimed that a “Black lesbian club” at Columbia University screened a film and “put signs up that said, ‘No Jews allowed.’ As someone who plays a lesbian journalist on The Morning Show, I am more offended by it as a lesbian than I am as a Jew,” she said. “Because I wanna say to them, ‘You f—ing idiots. You don’t exist. You’re even lower than the Jews. A. You’re Black, and B. You’re gay and you’re turning your back against the people who support you?’ Because Jews, they rally around everybody.”
Saying that Adolf Hitler “got his entire playbook from the Jim Crow South,” Margulies criticized the Black community for not “embracing” Jews after “in the civil rights movement, the Jews were the ones that walked side by side with the Blacks to fight for their rights.”
“The fact that the entire Black community isn’t standing with us to me says either they just don’t know, or they’ve been brainwashed to hate Jews,” she added.
Margulies also brought up “colonialists,” a term used by Palestinian supporters about Israel, suggesting young Black people should leave the country.
“Here’s what kills me,” she said. “These kids are calling Jews colonialists. If you’re gonna go with that argument, kids, then get the f— out of America. Because you were not here first. Native Americans were here first and you owe them a big f—ing apology.”
Margulies is a three-time Emmy winning actress, author and producer who first garnered recognition for her starring roles as ER nurse manager Carol Hathaway on NBC’s ER and attorney Alicia Florrick on CBS’ The Good Wife, for which she also served as a producer. She most recently served as an executive producer on the Oscar-contending short documentary Jack and Sam, the story of two Holocaust survivors reunited nearly 80 years after they escaped death in a Nazi labor camp.