Last week, I saw a clip that made me want to stand up and cheer. It was of the actor Millie Bobby Brown talking back to a photographer on a red carpet. The paparazzi had been yelling at her to smile, and Brown retorted: “Smile? You smile,” before walking off. She refused to do what was expected of her.
It’s a similar story with the star of the recent TV series Alien: Earth, Sydney Chandler. The actor did not appear on the cover of Variety magazine alongside the show’s creator and one of her co-stars, after she said she didn’t want to take part in a video interview for a regular series called How Well Do They Know Each Other?. The interviewer spent the first half of the resulting cover story explaining the situation in a bemused, tut-tutting tone, noting all the stars who had been willing to take part in the franchise.
