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Kelly Rissman
US News Reporter
Shailene Woodley has addressed the backlash she faced for sharing Melania Trump’s statement about Donald Trump’s assassination attempt.
The Divergent star, 32, made headlines in July for posting Melania’s open letter to her Instagram Story.
Asked in a new interview with Bustle if she felt her actions were “misunderstood,” Woodley responded affirmatively, explaining that she had shared the post because she found it to be a “beautiful message of human compassion.”
“I read it and I was like, ‘This is so beautiful.’ I was in circles of people that I deeply respect – friends, colleagues, progressive, very intelligent thinkers, shakers and movers – and many of them were saying, ‘He missed! F***ing assassin missed! Maybe it was a setup. Maybe it was a conspiracy.’ I was going, ‘Have we forgotten that two human lives were taken?’ Two people died. That is sad. That is devastating. I could not understand how people were speaking about something with such passion for death,” the Big Little Lies alum said.
Woodley, who is a passionate environmentalist and previous Bernie Sanders supporter, said she only posted the first page of Melania’s statement “because the second page was more political.”
“The first page was very much like, ‘Look, underneath the political mask is a man, a grandpa, who comes home to his children, his grandchildren, and plays music. The man underneath that mask is my husband,’” Woodley said.
“I posted that letter because I thought it was a beautiful message of human compassion, and then I forgot about it because I have a life and I don’t live for what social media says,” she continued. “Then a week later, I got a text from a friend that said, ‘Are you OK?’ I Googled my name, because I’m like, ‘Oh f***, what did I say?’ And of course, there were all these news articles about Melania Trump, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that is now this? Hundreds of articles because I posted about a woman saying she’s grateful her husband is alive? Really?’”
Woodley said the criticism “made me shake my head,” adding: “If [who I am] is not coming through in the way that I’m intending, I’m not going to participate on social media. I participate in my own ways now that maybe are less public because I want to add to the right noise. I don’t want to add to unnecessary noise.”
The Fault in our Stars actor noted that her beliefs “are pretty well-known by the things [she has] done publicly in the quote-unquote activist world.”
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In July, Trump was nearly assassinated by a gunman who opened fire at his Pennsylvania rally. Following the incident, former First Lady Melania broke her silence regarding the murder attempt, making an impassioned plea for Americans to come “together as one.”
“When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change,” she wrote in a statement shared on social media at the time.
“I am grateful to the brave secret service agents and law enforcement officials who risked their own lives to protect my husband,” Melania said before implying on the second page of the statement that voting for Trump would help “realize this world again,” where “respect is paramount, family is first and love transcends.”
