Emmy- and Tony Award-winning actress Judith Light spoke out on Friday about how her own advocacy within the LGBT community has helped inform her views on the #MeToo movement and women stepping forward to identify incidents of harassment and worse at the hands of men.
“I am so relieved and grateful and joy filled that these stories are being told,” Light told TheWrap editor in chief Sharon Waxman on Friday at the Power Women Breakfast NYC.
Light, a longtime advocate for LGBTQ issues, said that watching women share their experiences recalled for her how the questions that many people were asking during the early days of the gay-rights movement.
“It goes back to the thing I was talking about the LGBTQ community,” she said. “Who will you be? Who is your authentic self? If you have secrets you need to tell them. You need to talk about them and that’s what’s happening and that is something that really thrills me.”
“Women need to be heard, their stories need to be told,” said the actress, who stars in “Transparent” as well as “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.” “I feel a difference in the way I am relating to the women that I know.”
Light appeared on stage at New York City’s Time Warner Center for an in-depth one-on-one focusing on Light’s career and her years of advocacy for the causes she cares about.
Light also revealed that her strong desire to help transgender individuals helped her land the role of Shelly on the Amazon series, “Transparent.”
“You always have to figure that there are a ton of people vying for any role,” said Light, who said that all she did in her audition call was talk about her work as an LGBTQ advocate.
“That was my audition, I didn’t read the script,” she said. “The community which I think is the most inspiring and extraordinary community was being shoved away, shoved in the closet. There was a level of homophobia that still runs deep in this country.”
TheWrap’s Power Women Breakfast series is connecting and inspiring the leading influential women of entertainment, media, technology and brands in the key cities where those women work, create, gather, network and connect. All ticket proceeds go directly to benefit women’s leadership programs and gender equity initiatives via WrapWomen Foundation.
You can watch a live stream of the whole event here.