Kristen Stewart: ‘I Feel Really Bad for’ Kim Davis

Actress Kristen Stewart says she feels “really bad” for jailed Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis – but not for the reasons one might think.

In a fluff-piece interview with the Daily Beast‘s Marlow Stern at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Stewart is promoting her (by-most-accounts rip-off) sci-fi movie Equals, the actress said she felt “deeply uncomfortable” watching Davis get released from jail this week. Davis had been jailed earlier this month for refusing to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple due to her religious beliefs.

“Oh my god. Did you see her come out of jail? Honestly, it makes me so deeply uncomfortable,” Stewart told the outlet. “I feel really bad for her. Anyone who’s so closed off to things that are so apparent? Imagine what else she’s missing out on in life. I’m not making any grand statements about her personally, but if something so glaringly obvious, such as this subject…”

“…To have that much hate in your heart must be awful,” cut in Stern.

“That’s why I feel bad for her,” Stewart replied. “It’s like, ‘Oh buddy, that must suck.’ That fear of the unknown cripples people, breeds hate, and it’s just very sad.”

Stern told Stewart that her film Equals struck him as “being about the denial of love.”

“This is an issue that’s come to the fore in America in a big way when you look at the gay rights movement, where, despite the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, a large segment of the population – Republicans, primarily – still believe that that the LGBT community should be denied the right to love. And denying anyone that basic human right can drive people crazy.”

Failing to catch Stern’s false premise that Republicans or conservatives believe anyone should be denied the “right to love,” Stewart replied:

Abso-f***ing-lutely. It is crazy. It’s weird because if you’re overtly emotional about anything, people discredit what thought you might be contributing, because anything overtly emotional can be viewed as a weakness. It’s interesting what you’re saying about how now we’re trying to suppress emotions or irregularities with drugs and deem people controllable by meds, because I think we’re more in tune and more honest with our emotions now than we have ever been. You think about your grandparents or their grandparents, and you think about the patriarch of the family never showing emotion —with women, too. As we’ve gotten past that, the meds have upped. It’s bizarre. The two things don’t really go together.

Stewart walked the red carpet for Sunday’s premiere of Equals in Toronto alongside co-star Nicholas Hoult and director Drake Doremus. But the film has received mostly tepid reviews; the Wrap‘s Alonso Duralde wrote that the film “feels cobbled together from George Orwell, THX-1138, The Giver, perfume commercials and the Apple store,” while at least three other critics, including the Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney, called the film “dull.”

The Daily Beast‘s Stern was one of the few to like the film, calling it “one erotic movie, which in today’s romanceless Hollywood, is quite the accomplishment.”

Check out the rest of Stewart’s Daily Beast interview here.