Julianna Margulies Apologizes After Backlash for Comments About Black and LGBTQ Supporters of Palestine

Julianna Margulies has issued an apology after expressing her disdain at Black and LGBTQ Americans’ strong support for Palestine amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

In a statement to Deadline, the 57-year-old actress expressed that she was “horrified” after making the controversial comments while on The Back Room with Andy Ostroy podcast. Margulies drew immediate backlash after audio clips began circulating on X.

“I am horrified by the fact that statements I made on a recent podcast offended the Black and LGBTQIA+ communities, communities I truly love and respect,” she told Deadline on Friday. “I want to be 100% clear: Racism, homophobia, sexism, or any prejudice against anyone’s personal beliefs or identity are abhorrent to me, full stop. Throughout my career I have worked tirelessly to combat hate of all kind, end antisemitism, speak out against terrorist groups like Hamas, and forge a united front against discrimination. I did not intend for my words to sow further division, for which I am sincerely apologetic.”

On the podcast, Margulies chastised the Black community for their boisterous support for Palestine, even though “in the civil rights movement, the Jews were the ones that walked side by side with the Blacks to fight for their rights.”

“The fact that the entire Black community isn’t standing with us, to me, says either they just don’t know or they’ve been brainwashed to hate Jews,” she said in the podcast. 

Margulies, who plays a lesbian journalist in the AppleTV+ series, The Morning Show, also suggested there seems to be more uproar over the “wrong use of pronouns on college campuses” than there is about antisemitism in this country.

“Oh my god, forget it. It’s those kids who are spewing this antisemitic hate that have no idea they stepped foot in an Islamic country — these people who want us to call them they/them or whatever they want us to call them … it’s those people that will be the first beheaded and their heads played with like a soccer ball on the field,” the actress said on the podcast. “And that’s who they’re supporting? Terrorists who don’t want women to have their rights? LGBTQ people get executed.”

When the host brought up Ken Burns’ 2022 documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust, the Good Wife star, who is Jewish, said “it should be mandatory watching.”

“Especially for the Black community, if I may, because Hitler got his entire playbook from the Jim Crow South,” she added. “The Nazis were watching how the Jim Crow South were treating slaves and said, ‘Oh, great call, let’s do that playbook. That’s what we’ll do to the Jews,’ which is also why, in the civil rights movement, the Jews were the ones that walked side by side with the Blacks to fight for their rights, because they know. And now the Black community isn’t embracing us and saying, ‘We stand with you the way you stood with us’?”

The actress also shared her thoughts on a screening of Black lesbian films at Columbia University last month that included an online flyer that read, “Zionists aren’t invited.”

“As someone who plays a lesbian journalist on The Morning Show, I am more offended by it as a lesbian than I am as a Jew, to be honest with you,” she said. “Because I wanna say to them, ‘You f**king idiots. You don’t exist. Like, you’re even lower than the Jews. A, you’re Black, and B, you’re gay, and you’re turning your back against the people who support you? Because Jews, they rally around everybody.”

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