Once again, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Meryl Streep has jumped aboard Rachel Feldman’s Lilly Ledbetter fair pay movie, Lilly. Streep has brought her backing to Feldman and fellow producers to bring the long-gestating feature based on the life of the equal pay icon to production. The Hollywood actress earlier lent her support to calls for equal pay for women in the U.S., including raising the issue while promoting her star turn in Suffragette, in which she played the iconic political activist Emmeline Pankhurst. Feldman will direct Lilly, which earlier had the working title Ledbetter, as it portrays Ledbetter inspiring the Fair Pay Restoration Act, the first piece of legislation President Barack Obama signed after his inauguration. J. Todd Harris (The Kids Are All Right) has also joined Feldman as a producing partner on the project. Ledbetter gained attention by fighting The Goodyear Tire Company for her right to pay equal to that of her male counterparts. She was a pioneer in putting a name to the issue, before Megan Rapinoe energized the fight for equal pay in sports and Michelle Williams spotlighted the pay gap for female actors in Hollywood. “Historic dramas often chronicle the external forces of politics, but Lilly tells the story of what happens to a woman’s inner life when patriarchal injustice overwhelms every aspect of her existence. Lilly is the perfect film for this moment in time,” Feldman, a director, screenwriter and activist and the former chair of the DGA Women’s Steering Committee, said in a statement.

According to The Guardian, Meryl Streep, JK Rowling and Zadie Smith have all added their names to an open letter calling on the United Nations to investigate the death of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. More than 100 artists, writers and activists have shown support on the international day to end impunity for crimes against journalists, a month after the Washington Post journalist was killed at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. “The violent murder of a prominent journalist and commentator on foreign soil is a grave violation of human rights and a disturbing escalation of the crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia, whose government in recent years has jailed numerous writers, journalists, human rights advocates and lawyers in a sweeping assault on free expression and association,” the letter reads. It’s addressed to António Guterres, the UN secretary general, and calls on him to initiate an independent investigation into what really happened to Khashoggi. Since his disappearance, Turkish officials have said they have evidence that he was dismembered and his body was dissolved by a squad of Saudi assassins. Yet Saudi officials still claim it was the result of a fistfight and an interrogation gone wrong. “The murder of a journalist inside a diplomatic facility would constitute nothing less than an act of state terror intended to intimidate journalists, dissidents and exiled critics the world over,” the letter reads. The full article can be read over at The Guardian.

Today, more than 98 million adolescent girls around the world are not in school. That’s a lot of empty desks—and a lot of dreams that are being cut short. When girls get the opportunities they deserve, amazing things start to happen; poverty goes down, economies grow, families get stronger, and babies are born healthier. And the world, by all accounts, gets better. Join the Global Girls Alliance to take action to help adolescent girls and the grassroots leaders working to educate them. As they write on their website, “It’s simple: when girls go to school, the world gets better. Hear from some of our friends—Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, John Legend, Natalie Portman, David Beckham, and more—about why they’re excited to be a part of the Obama Foundation’s Global Girls Alliance, a program that will engage people around the world to take action to help adolescent girls and the grassroots leaders working to educate them”. To learn more, visit globalgirlsalliance.org.

Although Meryl Streep was in the news this year for a variety of reasons – including her response to the allegations of sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein – as an actress, she did what she always does and threw her weight behind a story she believed in. For her role as publisher Katharine Graham in Steven Spielberg’s The Post – the true story of The Washington Post’s attempts to publish the Pentagon Papers and expose a massive government cover-up in 1971 – Streep earned a record 21st Oscar nomination. In playing the part, Streep endorsed a timely message – namely that a rigorous, free press is an essential part of a healthy democracy, which we should not only support, but celebrate and defend. Here, she writes an exclusive letter for PORTER about why we need good reporters now more than ever.

We need to protect, defend and thank the current crop of journalists around the world, because they, their scruples and their principles are the front-line defense of free and informed people.

EXCLUSIVE: Meryl Streep's open letter in defence of the free presshttps://t.co/03Q3No7a3h pic.twitter.com/B9f2yNXnpX

— PORTER magazine (@PORTERmagazine) 26. September 2018

There’s no denying that the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have had a significant impact on Hollywood. But does that mean that the industry is in for a long overdue sea change? Not without taking the right action, and not without raising the right awareness. In “This Changes Everything”, director Tom Donahue and actress Geena Davis — who also founded the Geena Davis Institute for Gender in Media — reveal just how gender-biased the film industry really is, by laying bare the raw statistics and providing essentially irrefutable, numerical evidence as to how female filmmakers, actors and even behind-the-scenes crew members have been systematically discriminated against going back decades. The result is eye-opening, to say the least, but as the film makes abundantly clear, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Also featuring interviews with some of Hollywood’s biggest names — including Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Jessica Chastain and Natalie Portman – “This Changes Everything” isn’t just a telling exposé of the dark side of the industry. It’s also an affirming look at how people are willing to come together to change the situation for the better. “This Changes Everything” makes its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. Its runtime is 1 hr. 37 min. Many thanks to Glenn for the heads-up.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep and Chadwick Boseman are among the notable names who have signed a letter in support of gender equality. More than 150 stars have banded together with international charity ONE in the hopes of creating change. Back in March, on International Women’s Day, the organization published its fourth annual #PovertyIsSexist letter to world leaders, “demanding that they deliver powerful changes for women and girls living in extreme poverty.” And now, Winfrey, Streep, Boseman, along with a myriad of other influential figures, are lending their support by signing onto the letter. Other famous signatories from the entertainment industry include Reese Witherspoon, Amy Schumer, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Natalie Portman, Mariska Hargitay, Mindy Kaling, Neil Patrick Harris and Yara Shahidi. “We won’t stand by while the poorest women are overlooked,” part of the letter states, expressing a dire need for “historic changes for women” in the #MeToo and Time’s Up era. The campaign has also received support from those outside of show business, including former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Chelsea Clinton and Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington. Read the entire letter below, as well as a full list of signatories:

The Golden Globes have been handed out earlier this evening. Meryl Streep didn’t win for “The Post”, Frances McDormand was named Best Actress in a Drama for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Misouri” – who is, in my opinion, the best actress of her generation and deserves all the praise she gets, so fine with me :-) At least she took the red carpet for the first time in years. As it was reported before that some actresses chose to be accompanied by activists, Meryl walked the red carpet with Ai-jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and co-director of the Caring Across Generations Campaign. “She and I are so happy to be here in this particular moment,” Streep told E! News. “I think that people are aware now of a power imbalance and it’s something that leads to abuse. It’s led to abuse in our own industry, and it’s led to abuse across domestic workers’ field of work. It’s in the military, it’s in Congress, it’s everywhere and we want to fix that. We feel sort of emboldened in this particular moment to stand together in a thick black line dividing then from now.” Edit: over 200 additional pictures from the arrivals, the show and the after-party have been added to the photo gallery, with many many thanks to Claudia for her support. The video archive has been updated with the Best Actress segment and the E! Live from the Red Carpet interview with Meryl and Ai-jen Poo. Enjoy all the new additions.

Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, Shonda Rhimes and more than 300 other women are taking a stand against sexual harassment and assault in the entertainment industry by launching Time’s Up—a movement that aims to promote equality and safety in the workplace. The initiative addresses legislation, corporate policy and hiring practices and aggregates resources. “Earning a living should not come at the cost of anyone’s safety, dignity or morale,” Rhimes said in a statement appearing in a Time’s Up email. “Every person should get to work in an environment free from abuse, assault and discrimination. It’s well past time to change the culture of the environment where most of us spend the majority of our day – the work place. 51% of our population is female, over 30% of our population is of color. Those are important, vital, economically powerfully voices that need to be heard at every level.” She also added, “Time’s Up is working to make sure the people walking the corridors of power within the workplace and in politics truly reflect the full mix of America—the real America that looks like and includes all of us. Look, this isn’t going to be easy but it is right. And fighting for what is right can seem hard. But letting what is wrong become normal is not easier—it is just more shameful.” You can read the whole article and Time’s Up letter at the The New York Times website.

In honor of the centennial of women being granted the right to vote in New York, the New-York Historical Society will screen the Meryl Streep-narrated documentary We Rise. The short film, which also features Alicia Keys’ original song “We Are Here,” tells the story of the women who fought for change in the U.S. during the early 20th century. The doc will profile many women of the era, including suffragist and black women’s organizations leader Addie Hunton, Henry Street Settlement founder Lillian Ward and birth control activist Margaret Sanger, to name a few.

“We are proud to celebrate the centennial of women’s suffrage in New York this year with a powerful new film and exhibition, each one showing how a determined group of people struggling for rights and equality can succeed in creating change,” NYHS CEO and president Dr. Louise Mirrer said Wednesday in a statement. “We Rise recounts a period of history that tends to be overlooked in textbooks, but the impact of those first decades of the 20th century leading up to women’s suffrage in New York is still felt today.” The film will premiere Nov. 3, the same day as the opening of the society’s latest exhibit, Hotbed. The exhibit will feature the bohemian vibe of Greenwich Village in the early 20th century and will explain the pivotal role female artists and activists played in earning the right to vote. We Rise will play on rotation with the film New York Story in the historical society’s ground-floor theater. Many thanks to Frank and Glenn for the heads-up.

It’s been a busy Tuesday for Meryl Streep, having attended both the Women for Women Luncheon and the 100th Anniversary of Planned Parenthood. At the luncheon, Hillary Clinton was the featured speaker and was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent and anchor of “Amanpour.” Streep, Donna Karan, Billie Jean King and Sophie Turner were among the 650 women who attended the luncheon at 583 Park Avenue. The event succeeded in raising $1.2 million for the programs that improve women’s lives in countries affected by conflict and war. Later in the evening, Meryl was joined by Tina Fey and Scarlett Johansson to support Planned Parenthood at its centennial celebration, and to hear Clinton urge continued activism on behalf of women and girls around the world, and access to services like pregnancy and maternity care. Advancing women’s rights and opportunities, Clinton said at the event Tuesday evening — during which she received an award — “remains the great unfinished business of the 21st century. And some days, it seems like it may be even more unfinished than we’d hoped.” Pictures from both events have been added to the photo gallery, alongside some new pictures from the PEN America Gala.