Evangeline Lilly says she knew she would ‘wake the giant’ with anti-vax mandate rally photos after backlash
Lilly's interview, published Friday, marked the first time the 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' star has spoken about the controversy
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Evangeline Lilly said she knew she was going to "wake the giant" when she shared photos from an anti-vaccine mandate rally in Washington, D.C., last year.
"I know the beast that I’m attacking," the "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" star told Esquire in an interview published Friday, recalling what she was thinking when she shared the post on Instagram. "I know that I have a little pebble and there's this f------ Goliath giant."
She continued, "If I shoot this pebble, it's going to wake the giant."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}In January 2022, the actress shared photos from a rally supporting "bodily sovereignty." The rally occurred at the same as the Canadian trucker anti-vaccine mandate protests.
EVANGELINE LILLY RAILS AGAINST VACCINE MANDATES, SAYS IT'S ‘NOT SAFE’: ‘THIS IS NOT THE WAY’
Evangeline Lilly said she knew she was "waking the giant" with an Instagram post against vaccine mandates. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
"I believe nobody should ever be forced to inject their body with anything, against their will," she captioned her post at the time, adding, "This is not the way. This is not safe. This is not healthy. This is not love. I understand the world is in fear, but I don’t believe that answering fear with force will fix our problems. I was pro-choice before COVID and I am still pro-choice today."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Lilly told Esquire she debated "about six hundred times" on whether to post it.
"I just wanted people out there who were struggling because they were under severe pressure to do something they didn't want to do to know that they weren't alone, to know that there were people who actually felt they had a right to say no," she said.
The actor also courted controversy at the beginning of the pandemic and later apologized in March 2020 when she shared an Instagram post about having just dropped her kids off at gymnastics, using the hashtag "#businessasusual" while quarantine measures were first being put in place.
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Evangeline Lilly attends the 2022 Jhpiego Awards Ceremony on December 05, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Phillip Faraone)
"I didn’t expect anyone to pay attention to it, because no one ever pays attention to what I post," she told Esquire.
Lilly said that she decided to apologize a little more than a week later, because "I ended up having enough people say to me, ‘Well, there’s a lot of people who are dying right now, and it might have been really insensitive to what they’re going through,’ and that resonated for me."
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Johns Hopkins Medicine says that coronavirus vaccines are "very safe and very good at preventing serious or fatal cases of COVID-19. The risk of serious side effects associated with these vaccines is very small."