Scarlett Johansson covers the latest issue of InStyle, mostly to promote Jurassic World Rebirth, I guess, even though it comes out this summer. I think she agreed to this interview to talk about her entrance into the beauty world, her clean-beauty company The Outset. The celebrity-beauty company industry is so oversaturated, but the girls keep starting these companies and many of them are wildly successful. Scarlett’s got a different business model though – while The Outset is on social media, Scarlett is not. Scarlett refuses. Scarlett will not promote her films, TV appearances or her beauty business on social media. Studio publicists and her own company’s co-founder have begged her for years, but Scarlett just shrugs off their pleas. She talks about that extensively in InStyle. Some highlights:
On Colin Jost’s SNL joke “I’ve been eating roast beef every night since my wife had the kid.” “It was so vulgar. I just can’t believe that they went there. I was like—it was so gross. It was really gross.” She starts laughing. “And, like, old-school gross. My experience of it was so funny.”
How close she’s gotten to getting on Instagram: “I got close enough to talk to my therapist about it. I was like, I guess this is something I need to do. But it goes against my core values. I think it was more about: How do I express that, too? Because there’s so much expectation from…” She trails off.
Universal wanted her to get an IG too: “I mean, even today, I got an email from Universal [Pictures], and they’re like, ‘Hey, would you consider joining Instagram in tandem with the release of Jurassic World: Rebirth?’ [I] get a lot of pressure to join social media.” It does make her think. “Is there a way I could do this and stay true to who I am? It didn’t feel like I could. The work that I put out there is all based in truth. That’s the key ingredient. So if I was a person who really enjoyed social media, then I could totally get on the bandwagon. But I’m not. And I think the film will do fine.”
What she learned from suing Disney (she settled with them in 2021): “I don’t need to be beating the drum the whole time. That’s not my place. But, also, I’m not afraid of being invalidated. For certain things, particularly with the streamer residual piece, when the industry is in the process of this huge shift, that bubble eventually had to burst. I guess the bubble popped with me in a way. I’m fortunate enough to have been working for such a long time, and not that long ago felt settled with where I am in my career.” She says she, not so long ago, lived feast or famine. “Like every single actor working, I had this constant fear that everything would go away. Or that every movie would be my last. I am still the 8-year-old kid just waiting to get another part. But now I see that actually I built something that… that I have a place here. And because of that, I’ve been able to stand up for myself and not feel like I would disappear. I can shoulder it.”
She’s open in her real life, but not online: “But if anyone knows me, I definitely over-share. I’m not a closed book, you know? I’m politically active and vocal about it. But I am a private person in the sense that I value my close friendships. My family is very precious to me, as is their privacy. The anonymity of my children is very precious to me. I was talking to my daughter the other day, because she said, ‘Oh, I would love to make videos for The Outset.’ She was like, ‘Why can’t I?’ And I said, ‘Well, other than the fact that you’re 10…’”
You can never put the fame genie back in the bottle: “The thing about being a public figure is that the idea of being recognizable and celebrated feels fun, but then you can never stuff it back in the bottle. The reality of it is, there’s a massive loss to that, you know? So I think preserving that for as long as possible until it’s someone’s choice, that’s the choice I make as far as my kids go. I want to go and buy my own shit at Duane Reade.”
She’s wanted to join the Jurassic universe for a long time: “I saw the first one when I was, like, 11. And it looked like nothing we’d ever seen before. I remember it so clearly. The music, the Brontosaurus, the whole thing. The first time that T-Rex screamed, oh my God, it was transcendent.”
While I’m no ScarJo fan or apologist, I was on her side in her Disney lawsuit and I was appalled on her behalf for the way she was treated. I enjoy her perspective on that, four years later – that she didn’t have to become the face of “celebrities standing up to studios,” but she’s fine with shouldering some of the responsibility to get things moving. That lawsuit was the precursor to the SAG strike which was mostly about the same thing: how actors get paid in the age of streaming. As for getting on Instagram… like, even Angelina Jolie is on Instagram now, even if she never promotes her films – Jolie is highlighting her humanitarian and charitable interests, plus some Atelier Jolie stuff (which is adjacent to her humanitarian work). I guess my point is, social media is what you make it. It would be easy enough for Scarlett to get an IG and just post work stuff (film promo and beauty promo). But if she doesn’t want to, so be it. It’s funny that even the studios are trying to get her on IG though.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of InStyle.
