Entourage star Emmanuelle Chriqui has defended the series after claims it was “misogynistic”.
The series followed a group of men, led by Hollywood actor Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), and their lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles.
Chriqui joined the HBO comedy in 2005 for its second season, and played Sloan, the girlfriend of Kevin Connolly’s Eric, right through to its final run in 2011. She reprised the role of Sloan for the film spin-off in 2015.
In recent years, the show’s legacy has been questioned, with some writers calling the Doug Ellin-directed series sexist for its depiction of women as disposable sexual pursuits.
One person who disagrees with this is Chriqui, whose supporting character was the most prominent woman featured in the show.
During Chriqui’s appearance on Inside of You, podcast host Michael Rosenbaum asked the actor about whether the “bro culture” portrayed in the show “still exists”.
“Are you referring to like how people always go on about how misogynistic the show is?” Chriqui replied, to which Rosenbaum said: ”Do they do that?”
”Yes – I think it’s such horses***,” Chriqui said.
Defending the show, she continued: “It was A) a different time and B) not that different to what happens still now. Like, let’s be real. Yeah. it was before MeToo but every week there’s some new s***head who’s going down for something.”
She went on: “I always just defended it. I think I just always got sensitive about it because people love to hate on things that are working. Someone is always gonna say something. The truth is that Doug Ellin was a genius and Doug Ellin simply wrote about the s*** that went on and he did it in an entertaining fashion.
“So you can s*** on the show or hate our business, but he was writing about our business. Doug used to say, ‘My god, this is tame compared to what the real story is.’”
She said of the criticism: “I roll my eyeballs because I just think it’s ridiculous, and I think people are inherently fascinated with out business and I think you got to take the good with the bad. And there’s a lot of bad.”
Chriqui, who currently appears in Superman & Lois, described her time on the show as “11 out of 10”.
