Kate Winslet Slams Titanic Body Shaming as Borderline Abusive: Why Were They So

 Posted on August 20, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  923 words  |  Reinaldo Massengill

After 25 years, Kate Winslet is finally speaking out against the “Titanic” body shamers who have used the film’s ending to mock her weight. Viewers have long debated if there was enough room on the floating door for Winslet’s Rose and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack to both survive the freezing Atlantic water. Only Rose used the makeshift raft, with Jack dying of hypothermia. According to Winslet, toxic fans have blamed Rose’s weight for not allowing Jack the chance to survive on the wooden door.

“Apparently I was too fat,” Winslet said during an interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast. “Why were they so mean to me? They were so mean. I wasn’t even fucking fat.”

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Winslet continued, “I would have said to journalists, I would have responded, I would have said, ‘Don’t you dare treat me like this. I’m a young woman, my body is changing, I’m figuring it out, I’m deeply insecure, I’m terrified, don’t make this any harder than it already is.’ That’s bullying, you know, and actually borderline abusive, I would say.”

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It’s hardly the first time Winslet has had to contend with body shamers during her decades-long career. The Oscar winner revealed in an interview with The Sunday Times earlier this year that she was told to settle for “fat girl” parts when she was a young performer in acting school. Later on, when Winslet started booking movie roles, her agent was often asked the same question: “How’s her weight?”

“It can be extremely negative,” Winslet said about the pressures facing female actors. “People are subject to scrutiny that is more than a young, vulnerable person can cope with. But in the film industry it is really changing. When I was younger my agent would get calls saying, ‘How’s her weight?’ I kid you not. So it’s heartwarming that this has started to change.”

As for the infamously-debated “Titanic” ending, director James Cameron recently revealed that he conducted a scientific study to prove that both Jack and Rose could not have survived by floating on the makeshift raft together. The study will air in February tied to a new 4K release of “Titanic” in theaters.

“We have done a scientific study to put this whole thing to rest and drive a stake through its heart once and for all,” Cameron told The Toronto Sun. “We have since done a thorough forensic analysis with a hypothermia expert who reproduced the raft from the movie and we’re going to do a little special on it that comes out in February.”

Cameron continued, “We took two stunt people who were the same body mass of Kate and Leo and we put sensors all over them and inside them and we put them in ice water and we tested to see whether they could have survived through a variety of methods and the answer was, there was no way they both could have survived. Only one could survive.”

Listen to Winslet’s full interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast here.

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