After coming under fire for saying, "We're all Africans," Meryl Streep is attempting to clear her name.
The Academy Award-winning actress received criticism after some say she dismissed the issue of Hollywood diversity. When an Egyptian reporter asked if she understood Arab and North African films, Streep replied, "I've played a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures."
She then added, "There is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture, and after all we're all from Africa originally. Berliners, we're all Africans really."
On Thursday, Streep wrote an essay for The Huffington Post titled, "Setting The Record Straight From Berlin," in which she attempts to provide context for her comments. In her essay, the 66-year-old explained:
I was not minimizing difference, but emphasizing the invisible connection empathy enables, a thing so central to the fact of being human, and what art can do: convey another person's experience. To be in Berlin is to see proof that walls don't work.
Streep then described films awarded at the festival, for which she serves as jury president, noting that they were about Syrian refugees and Philippine independence.
The actress added that her remarks in Berlin were "misconstrued," and that all the controversy detracted from celebrating the diversity of those honored at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Streep did not apologize in her essay.
