Jessica Chastain Got ‘Quite A Lot Of Flak’ For Wearing A Mask At The Oscars

The 95th Academy Awards was held on on March 12, 2023. That week, nearly 2,000 people died from COVID-19 in the United States, a steep drop from the peak of pandemic, but 2,000 people is still 2,000 people.

Can you blame Jessica Chastain for wearing a mask to the Oscars

It turns out, the worst people in the world can. “I was wearing the mask at the Oscars. I got quite a lot of flak for that. A lot of people thought I was making some political statement. I don’t know what they thought,” Chastain told the Hollywood Reporter. The Oscar winner was in a production of the Henrik Ibsen play A Doll’s House at the time, and she felt it would have been “irresponsible” for her, and rude to her castmates, to get sick and be out for a week.

“I’ll tell you,” she continued, “the best thing is someone at the stage door gave me a mask that said, ‘I’m On Broadway.’ But yeah, the SAG Awards, the Oscars, a lot of people were like, ‘What are you doing!’ I just couldn’t get sick. And I didn’t. I haven’t missed a show.”

If only the CDC could have bottled the heat from this video of Chastain and Oscar Isaac and used it to wipe out COVID-19.