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Stop Sending Natalie Portman Crazy Emails About Gaza

‘How did I get on this list? Also Ryan Seacrest?’

by
Stephanie Butnick
December 24, 2014
Natalie Portman on October 22, 2013. (ANDREW COWIE/AFP/Getty Images)
Natalie Portman on October 22, 2013. (ANDREW COWIE/AFP/Getty Images)

If Natalie Portman had stood up to John Galliano in the wake of his drunken anti-Semitic rant, it would have been enough.

If Natalie Portman had admitted to being starstruck at synagogue when she ran into Dirty Dancing‘s Jennifer Grey, it would have been enough.

If Natalie Portman had gone to Israel to direct and star in an adaptation of Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness, for which she wrote the screenplay (Oz himself gave the project his blessing), it would have been enough.

But then Natalie Portman took on Hollywood producers who included her on ranting, reply-all email chains about this summer’s Israeli operation in Gaza, and it was more than we could have ever asked for on Christmas Eve.

Gawker brings us perhaps the best nugget from the Sony hacks–a series of emails found in Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton’s inbox about the escalating situation in Gaza. The non-bcc’d emails (everyone’s addresses were visible) were sent regularly by film producers Ryan Kavanaugh and Ron Rotholz.

After asking to be removed from the lists (“you should not be copying me publicly so that 20 people i don’t know have my personal info,” she wrote Kavanaugh), which at one point swelled to include Rabbi Marc Schneier, Russell Simmons, Scarlett Johansson, and Ryan Seacreast, Portman could handle no more. After a particularly active discussion featuring the email subject line, “Is the Gaza War Really Over?” Portman wrote to Lynton and his wife:

“How did I get on this list? Also Ryan Seacrest?”

Dayenu.

Tablet will be dark on Thursday for Chinese food and movies. Merry Christmas, and see you Friday.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.