From the very late ‘80s to the end of the aughts you couldn’t escape Morgan Freeman’s presence on-screen. He was in Oscar contender after Oscar contender, the go-to character actor of his heyday and then, poof, something happened. He disappeared.
However, it’s not like he’s retired either. Case in point, all the straight-to-VOD movies he’s been making these past 10 years.
One could theorize that his bewildering absence from mainstream films had to do with the 84-year-old actor being “MeToo’ed” in 2018. However, it seems like the story against Freeman didn’t stick, with the Screen Actors Guild deciding against revoking Freeman’s lifetime achievement award, after careful investigation.
The reporter in the accusatory CNN article, Chloe Melas, was also one of his accusers, which is an ethical violation in journalism. She should have been involved in the reporting, but as the source, rather than the writer. CNN got away with that one, but they seem to be breaking the ethical rules of the field every day these days. One of the accusers, Tyra Martin, has also come out and said she was misrepresented in the story and was not a “victim” of Freeman’s. [Freeman's lawyer sent a letter to CNN]
Melas’ story was flawed, and it had to do with, in her own words, Freeman “victimizing” her with a joke that didn’t even seem to be directed towards her.
Suffice to say, this was a very shady affair to begin with.
The whole thing began with a video that had Michael Caine joking around that he never asks a woman if she’s pregnant or not because he’s made that mistake in the past and that the woman was not pregnant. Freeman then made the snarky remark that he wished he was there to witness the moment. Melas automatically thought that Freeman’s comments were directed towards her.
Freeman is a legendary actor who had a peak streak of well-celebrated performances between 1989 and 2009: “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Glory,” “Unforgiven,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Seven,” “Amistad,” “Nurse Betty,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “The Dark Knight,” “Gone Baby Gone,” and “Invictus.”
The movie, due to release in 2027, is described as “a haunting Western thriller that follows a retired U.S. Marshal whose forty-year search for his wife’s killer leads him to an outlaw losing his memory.