I stand with Jessie Buckley.
This week, the Hamnet actress—highly favored to win the Oscar for Best Actress next Sunday—is going viral due to a resurfaced interview from November, in which she told a story about how she made her now-husband get rid of his cats early in their relationship.
During the interview, on the Happy Sad Confused podcast hosted by MTV’s Josh Horowitz, Buckley stated: “I don’t like cats.” Her Hamnet co-star Paul Mescal agreed, adding, “Fuck cats, honestly.” Horowitz jokingly asked if they were trying to end their careers—a statement that has turned out to be oddly prescient, if the current hubbub is to be believed. Buckley went on to explain why she believes “cats are mean,” which all boils down to her experience with her husband’s two cats that he had when they first began dating. “This is bad, I’m gonna get canceled,” she warned before continuing. Buckley stated that one of her husband’s former cats was a “pedigree-model bitch” who staged “a coup against” her. “I’d come home and there’d just be, like, poo on my pillow,” she offered as evidence. She apparently gave her husband an ultimatum: “It’s me or the cats.” How did that turn out? “But I wonnnn!” she gleefully exclaimed.
Ever since this interview reemerged and blew up online—mere days before Oscar voting closed, might I add—Buckley has been subjected to a rather surprising level of ire, both joking and dead serious. Most of the comments on the YouTube video from when it initially went up are positive, but the comments posted over the past two days have used this anecdote to pass judgment on Buckley’s and Mescal’s overall character. “Disgusting,” one person commented; “They sound insufferable,” someone else said. One commenter asked how it was possible for anyone to “have such a general hate towards all cats,” to which someone else responded: “They are horrible narcissistic people. I’m hoping they both realize they have only each other to blame when their careers go into the toilet.”
The press have run headlines about this old interview and the internet’s reaction, playing up Buckley’s story to the most exaggerated degree: The Sun said that Buckley “horrified fans,” while HuffPost said that Buckley made a “shocking confession.”
I have to come out and say it: Have we all lost our minds?
Disliking cats is not shocking! I have met some lovely cats in my day, but I have also met cats that I was convinced were the spawn of Satan. They can be lovely at best, aloof at their most moderate, and dangerous and, well, catty, at worst. Also, anyone who really knows cats would be well aware that they are smart—too smart to do things by “accident.” It’s entirely plausible that Buckley’s husband’s former cat was trying to, in some way, mark her territory. I, too, would have seen a cat’s decision to shit on my pillow as a tactic of targeted psychological warfare. And I say this after having spent many minutes petting my close friend’s lovely cat just a few days ago.
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More importantly, though, this simply shouldn’t be a big deal. Buckley is merely pointing out a preference formed by her own past experiences, the same way that some may not love dogs after being chased or attacked. Did Buckley, like society in general, use the word “hate” a little too liberally? Sure, but it’s not a crime to exaggerate for comedic effect. I also think it’s pretty obvious that Buckley meant she “hates” cats in the way some people “hate” cilantro: They don’t think it should cease to exist, they just don’t want it in their food. It’s about preference and compatibility. She wasn’t advocating for felicide. The response to stating a preference when it comes to pets shouldn’t be a widespread campaign to snatch an Oscar from your hands. I hate squirrels—I find them aggressive, and one hissed at my mother once. But that’s just how I feel; I’m not regularly campaigning for the eradication of Chip and Dale’s rodent cousins.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but this interview resurfacing days before Oscar voting closes—and at the same time that Buckley’s latest film, The Bride!, is facing a new wave of awful reviews—can’t be a coincidence. This feels like a carefully crafted strategy to create some sort of smear campaign against Buckley to prevent her strongly predicted Oscars win. This outrage cycle has gifted us some funny reactions and memes, but I draw the line at letting it snowball into a real controversy. Hamnet haters and Big Cat, I’m on to you.
