Much like her latest sparkly outfit on the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania press tour, Evangeline Lilly is reflecting. For example, she shared on Thursday’s episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast that she isn’t a big fan of her acting in early episodes of ABC’s Lost, particularly before the third season. “We would have Lost parties where the cast would get together to watch the show, and when it would be a Kate-centric episode, I would want to curl in a hole and die ‘cause I knew I was bad,†Lilly said. “And I still to this day will stand by the fact that I can watch the first couple seasons and I cringe because I’m not very good.†But is she equally embarrassed about, say, her decision to attend and post about a D.C. rally against vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic? Apparently not.
During a recent interview with Esquire, Lilly took the opportunity to re-justify her decision to attend the January 2022 rally, during which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. controversially compared the U.S.’s vaccination policies to the Holocaust. As a refresher, Lilly shared photos of the event on Instagram, writing in the caption that no one should be “forced to inject their body with anything, against their will.†“This is not healthy. This is not love,†Lilly added. “I understand the world is in fear, but I don’t believe that answering fear with force will fix our problems.â€
She told Esquire that she expected the backlash, and questioned whether she should post “about six hundred times†before she finally made her choice. “I know the beast that I’m attacking,†she recalled thinking. “I know that I have a little pebble and there’s this fucking Goliath giant. If I shoot this pebble, it’s going to wake the giant.†Lilly, who seems to see herself as the brave underdog in this metaphor, added, “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.â€
Luckily for her, she didn’t have to worry about criticism from her employers. On Happy Sad Confused, she said that Marvel was “very respectful†about her anti-vaxx opinions, essentially telling her that it was her business, not theirs. “I actually even got a really supportive phone call from [Ant-Man director] Peyton Reed at one point,†Lilly said. “[He was] just saying like, ‘Just so you know, there’s some rumors spreading about Marvel ditching you or canceling you. And that didn’t come from Marvel and that didn’t come from us, so just ignore that.’â€