Scarlett Johansson speaks out about paparazzi incident: 'It's a waiting game' until another Princess Diana situation
Scarlett Johansson is no newbie to handling paparazzi, but after a scary brush with some on Monday — while leaving Jimmy Kimmel Live! — she made a detour to the Los Angeles Police Department's Hollywood Station.
While leaving the theater at 6840 Hollywood Boulevard, where she had taped an episode of the ABC late-night show with Avengers: Endgame co-stars, paparazzi followed her car, in which she was a passenger with two others, in a dangerous fashion that made her feel unsafe. So they detoured to the police station, and she was escorted inside by her security detail to report the incident. Johansson, who was not injured, opted not to file a police report, preferring to just alert police to the incident.
In a statement to Yahoo on Tuesday afternoon, the star spoke out about the incident, saying that when she left the show, five cars “full of men with blacked out windows” chased her car “running red lights and putting other drivers and pedestrians at risk.” She said they did “so they could follow me to find out where I was staying” and then “stalk me and my young daughter for the duration of my stay” in L.A.
“The paparazzi consistently go to increasingly dangerous lengths to stalk and harass the people they are photographing,” she said. “Even after Princess Diana’s tragic death, the laws were never changed to protect targets from the lawless paparazzi. Many paparazzi have criminal pasts and will perform criminal acts to get their shot.”
She said that “paparazzi put people's live at risk, so they can wait for days in quiet neighborhoods in blacked out cars, and try to follow me to the playground and photograph my child and other people’s children in a safe place that should be off limits, but isn’t. All of this is perfectly legal.”
So after yesterday’s incident, she said, “I felt it was my duty as a concerned citizen who was being pursued dangerously and stalked to go to the local precinct and seek guidance there. I would encourage others in a similar situation to go to the police. Women across the U.S. are stalked, harassed and frightened and a universal law to address stalking must be at the forefront of law enforcement conversations. Until paparazzi are considered by the law for the criminal stalkers they are, it’s just a waiting game before another person gets seriously injured or killed, like Princess Diana.”
Scarlett on Monday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!:
Johansson has been a paparazzi target over the years, particularly during her marriage to Ryan Reynolds and her pregnancy with her now-4-year-old daughter, Rose. There has also been interest around her current relationship with Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost.
In 2005, Johansson was in a car accident outside Disneyland while trying to elude paparazzi. She swerved to get rid of the chasing media mob, but ended up hitting another vehicle containing a woman and her two young daughters. No one was injured.
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