Meryl Streep has never been known to shy away from the political, the uncomfortable, and the place where the two meet (remember her powerful anti-Trump Golden Globes acceptance speech? Still can’t watch it without tearing up.) She has been a prominent voice advocating for women in Hollywood following Harvey Weinstein’s public outing as the king of the Hollywood rapist creeps, denouncing his behavior as “disgusting” and praising the women who bravely stepped forward.
Which is why it may not have come as such a surprise — but still came as an enormous shock— when Streep opened up about two separate horrifying experiences throughout her life when she stood face to face with “real terror” and “real physical violence.”
Speaking at the Committee to Protect Journalists earlier this week, the actress detailed her attack in a speech to the audience:
“The two times in my life when I was threatened and dealt with real physical violence, I learned something about life that I wouldn’t have known otherwise and I was lucky because my instincts served me well.”
“In one instance, I played dead and waited until the blows stopped — watching like people say you do from about 50 feet above from where I was beaten.”
“And in the second instance, someone else was being abused and I just went completely nuts and went after this man. Ask Cher — she was there. And the thug ran away, it was a miracle.”
Cher mentioned this story in an interview with Us Weekly from several years ago, although it was one of those ’25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me’ pieces and it literally gives a single sentence about many topics I need to know more about. “Meryl Streep and I saved a girl from a large mugger in New York City,” reads the article, followed immediately by “The day I moved out of my home in Holmby Hills, I found a room I never knew existed.” Like, elaborate?! But I digress.
“[I was] changed by these events on a cellular level because women do know something particular about coming to the danger place. We come to it disadvantaged through the many millennia preceding our present moment and because of our vulnerability, we anticipate danger, we expect it, we’re hyper alert to it.”
The moral of the story here is do not fuck with Meryl Streep, or Cher, or any other woman, and ladies take self-defense classes, and fight and scream for your fucking lives, and carry mace, and be aware of your surroundings at all times, and raise your sons to be better. Now, to lighten the mood, please indulge in these psychotic Cher tweets:
