'The Invitation': Jessica M. Thompson is 'smashing the patriarchy' in Dracula bride horror movie

Elisabetta Bianchini

Fri, August 26, 2022 

Director Jessica M. Thompson is making her mark in horror filmmaking with The Invitation (now in theatres), starring Nathalie Emmanuel and Thomas Doherty, an eerie, feminist vampire tale that is fun and tense storytelling, but is ultimately hinged on the concept of exposing and “smashing” the patriarchy.

“Women filmmakers can tend to sometimes be really pigeonholed into certain things, so I didn't want to get pigeonholed into drama, even though I love drama,...I really want to get into genre, I really wanted to make a horror,” Thompson told Yahoo Canada.

“[Genre] reaches more people and has a broader audience, so therefore, you have the ability to kind of make social commentary without knocking people over the head with it.”

Essentially loneliness is what starts Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel) off on her path. After recently losing her mother, Evie takes a DNA test leading her to a long-lost, rich family in England. When she gets invited to a wedding by this newfound family, what seemed like a generous offer turns far more sinister, eventually being revealed that their intentions are based in continuing this prestigious bloodline.

“I was sent the script by Sony in January 2020 and I read it really quickly, it was a page turner,” Thompson said. “I was really drawn to this idea of the origin story of a bride of Dracula set in the modern world and I felt like that hadn't been told before.”

“I wanted to rewrite some of the things, I wanted to create a bit more of a blend of subverting the romance, so I kind of added more to the romance, I really love mashing genres... I kind of pitched them ideas and literally, it was March 15, 2020, just the day before the world shut down. I was the last meeting that Sony took, the last meeting I had in person with anybody.”

While the COVID-19 pandemic became a never-before-seen hurdle, Thompson says it allowed her to really, “spend time with the script” before production started in 2021.

Thomas Doherty, Jessica M. Thompson and Nathalie Emmanuel on set of "The Invitation"

'It's all about smashing the patriarchy in this film'

Aesthetically, The Invitation looks like everything you could want from a gothic, vampire movie, with the message of the film really focused on patriarchal issues.

“To me, it's all about smashing the patriarchy in this film and it's about the old world order, and how it's upheld not just by men, but by women who become complacent, and you could argue are victims of that, but also end up supporting it,” Jessica M. Thompson said. “That was really important to show because I think we all can point fingers at the bad men in the world, but there are also a lot of women that prop those men up.”

“I felt like exploring that in this kind of old [hierarchy], these bloodlines,...getting into the story through DNA, through blood, I think is a really unique motif. It just shows, what does blood mean? What does that heritage mean and can you break tradition? I argue, yes. Whenever somebody says, ‘well it's tradition,’ I'm like, ‘well that doesn't mean that it's good.’ That doesn't mean that it's healthy for society. Let's examine those old world orders. We've done it in vampires, but you could apply it to corporations, political structures.”

Thompson also is really exploring this idea of men using women for property, something she highlights audiences have really responded to already.

“There's that moment, which I love, that I've seen with a couple of audiences now, and when her great uncle...gives her a kiss on the cheek at the wedding, the whole audience goes ‘ew,’” Thompson said. “I just love that it's working, the audience understands this is men selling off their daughters, it's gross.”

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 08: (L-R) Director Jessica M. Thompson and actors Nathalie Emmanuel and Thomas Doherty attend THE INVITATION New York Friends & Family Screening at Crosby Hotel on August 08, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Sony Pictures Entertainment)

Finding 'The Invitation' leading cast

Of course, every great filmmaker needs great actors to collaborate with to bring the story to life, and Jessica M. Thompson had that in Game of Thrones actor Nathalie Emmanuel, leading the story as Evie.

“I always had Nathalie in mind,...originally the script was not for a woman of colour and I felt, because it's a story really about the patriarchy, the most disenfranchised people are largely women of colour,” Thompson said. “She's just such a gracious, incredible actor, throws herself into every moment, and horror films are particularly hard. You've got to put yourself through trauma, you've got to scream and cry, and she did all of that.”

“We watched the film together…and she was so moved, she was crying afterwards,...I'm glad she's just so proud.”

In order to balance that suave, aristocratic, but then deeply terrifying male aspect of the story, Thomas Doherty (Gossip Girl, High Fidelity) as Walter takes the lead in that respect in The Invitation.

“In my mind he’s the next Leonardo DiCaprio, he's honestly fantastic,” Thompson said. “He's really playing multiple characters, first of all, he comes in playing the lord of the manor…and then he realizes that doesn't really win her over, she doesn't give two hoots about his money, and so he has to kind of adapt to what she sees as a leading man.”

“Once the penny drops, he's obviously the complete villain… When he has some of those sneaky grins or those kind of mischievous, all-knowing kind of looks, the audience…could be like, ‘Oh, that was his true nature shining through.’”

Jessica M. Thompson

'It's strange to me that we have been cut out of this world'

Jessica M. Thompson really dove into her love of horror in this film, studying the tensions in her favourite movies in the genre, but also putting in a ton of Easter eggs for the aficionados, including 90 references to Bram Stoker's Dracula and other nods to The Shining. There was actually a moment, that was ultimately cut from the film, where, after Evie has nightmares, a maid says, “I tend to get nightmares after I eat rich food too,” because Stoker said he wrote Dracula after eating too much dressed crab.

This deep dive into horror exemplified in Thompson’s film further establishes the illogical, rage-inducing nature of women historically feeling like they didn't have the support and the space to create this type of genre-based story.

“It's strange to me that we have been cut out of this world, up until recently, and I'm so glad that Jennifer Kent,…[other women] of the world have opened that door to allow people like me in,” Thompson said. “I'm so sick of horror films, and any genre film,...[where] we're just rehashing old material."

"As soon as you open the door to more diverse people, women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, you're just gonna get a fresh perspective that you haven't seen before and that's going to give you something brand new. Unfortunately, of course, we're judged a little bit more harshly,...I think the audiences are too smart now, they want something fresh, they want something unique... I think there's a lot of room to grow but I think we're also definitely making our mark.”

CONSPIRACY THEORY

A Putin Critic Fell from a Building in Washington. Was It Really a Suicide?

D.C. police say they don’t suspect foul play. Fellow activists are incensed. And the city where it happened is barely paying attention.

Police say they do not suspect foul play in the death of Putin critic Dan Rapoport, but some of his political allies aren’t so sure. | Wikimedia Commons

By MICHAEL SCHAFFER
08/26/2022 04:30 AM EDT

The mysterious death last week of a prominent critic of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in Washington’s West End neighborhood is drawing fury from some of the Kremlin’s best-known global detractors — but scant notice in Washington, where police say they don’t suspect foul play was behind Dan Rapoport’s fall from a luxury apartment building on the night of Aug. 14.

“I think the circumstances of his death are extremely suspicious,” says Bill Browder, the formerly Moscow-based American financier who became a crusader for sanctions after the killing of his Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. Browder got to know Rapoport in Moscow years ago, before they both fell out of favor with the Russian regime. “Whenever someone who is in a negative view of the Putin regime dies suspiciously, one should rule out foul play, not rule it in.”

According to a Metropolitan Police Department incident report, officers responding to a call about a jumper found the 52-year-old Rapoport’s body on the sidewalk. He was wearing orange flip flops and a black hat and had a cracked phone, headphones and $2,620 in cash on him, but no wallet or credit cards. The police say the case remains open, even without a suspicion of foul play. As is standard for suspected suicides, a medical examiner’s report — which would typically reference medical or other records, include a toxicology screen and incorporate X-rays and other posthumous forensics to determine if there was a struggle before the fall — is pending.

The deceased was no mere exile. A Latvian-born U.S. citizen, Rapoport moved back to the U.S. in 2012 after making a fortune in Moscow but running afoul of the Russian government. Settling in Washington, he rubbed elbows with mover and shakers, living in a Kalorama manse that his family later sold for $5.5 million in 2016, when it became the home of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. By then, Rapoport had relocated again, setting up shop in Kyiv, where he became a frequent contact of U.S. media.

In the eyes of Rapoport’s political allies, the history of untimely deaths of Kremlin critics makes the police’s initial no-foul-play conclusion seem naive. “He was a well-known critic of Putin in the West and had been an effective critic,” Browder says. “He was also an open supporter of [the jailed opposition leader] Alexei Navalny. And he had all these connections in the elite of Washington, D.C. The immediate response of the Washington, D.C. police, I think, is a premature and unhelpful conclusion.”

“Nothing adds up,” says David Satter, a longtime Moscow correspondent in Soviet and post-Soviet times who in 2013 became the first U.S. reporter booted from Russia since the Cold War. Satter, now a frequent Wall Street Journal contributor and the author of several books about Putin’s Russia, had stayed with Rapoport in Kyiv. “This is why it has to be investigated. But everything we do know is very, very strange.”

Rapoport’s death has been the subject of major coverage overseas, but is oddly off the radar in Washington, where there has been little major media attention. It’s a strange and possibly telling omission from our midterm-absorbed city’s water-cooler conversation: A number of high-profile figures are implying that a foreign government may have killed an American citizen in the capital of the United States. Even if their conjectures are overblown, it ought to be news.

The suspicions, Browder says, began when the news of Rapoport’s death first broke on the Telegram channel of a former editor of Russian Tattler, via a convoluted story that claimed Rapoport’s dog was let loose with a suicide note and cash attached to him. Because intelligence services often put out information through gossip sites, the location raised antennae. “How the hell did she [the ex-Tattler editor] learn about Dan’s alleged suicide?” asks Vlad Burlutsky, a Russian expat who met Rapoport through his work supporting Navalny.

In a Russian media interview, Rapoport’s wife denied the story about the note — and the suicide, saying her husband had been making plans and that she expected to be in Washington to see him. (The police report also makes no mention of a note or a dog.)

“I’ve talked several times to Alyona, his widow, and she says she is absolutely certain that it’s not a suicide,” says close friend Ilya Ponomarev, the only member of the Russian Duma to vote against the annexation of Crimea and now a strident Putin critic also living in Kyiv.

Ponomarev says he’s less certain. But he fears a repeat of what happened in 2015, when Putin’s former media czar died in odd circumstances in Washington and, in his view, U.S. authorities soft-pedaled the investigation. “I would not be surprised that it would be the same thing, that people don’t want to deal with some crazy Russians,” he says. (Alyona Rapoport did not respond to my messages, and has only been quoted in a single Russian media story since confirming his death on Facebook.)

The case for suspicion involves some more basic practical questions: What was up with the wad of cash? Why would Rapoport have been making plans for the next few days? Why was he wearing a hat?

But mainly the suspicion has to do with Russia. “There’s an old saying that anyone can commit a murder but it takes brains to commit a suicide,” says Satter. “The version of suicide is for the irrelevant people who will simply accept it and move on without raising questions.”

Born in the USSR, Rapoport came with his parents to the U.S. at age 11, settling in Texas. After graduating from college, he moved to Russia in the wild post-Soviet days, settling in Moscow after a stint in Siberia. He made his fortune there as a stockbroker, eventually opening Soho Rooms, one of the city’s top nightspots. But in 2012, he announced that he was leaving Russia, declaring on Facebook that life there had become “unbearable and disgusting.”

In Washington, Rapoport and his Russian-born wife settled into the exclusive Kalorama neighborhood, enrolling a child at Maret, a top local private school. Acquaintances here describe a frenetic, intense personality, someone with ups and downs. He dabbled in the dining industry here, too, says Winston Bao Lord, a tech entrepreneur whose investments are largely in the hospitality space. He met Rapoport, who at the time had some money invested in an Alexandria restaurant, to pitch an idea that never panned out. Lord says Rapoport was a jocular social presence. “He was a big partier when I knew him,” Lord says. “He was a confident guy that felt very strongly about his views.”

Rapoport appeared occasionally in the media with Kremlin-critical posts. In 2018, the open-source investigative platform Bellingcat reported that Rapoport was behind the Facebook page of David Jewberg, purported to be a senior Pentagon analyst. The entirely made-up Lieutenant Colonel Jewberg was frequently quoted in Russian and Ukrainian media (and by some of Rapoport’s Washington friends) as a real U.S. defense insider. Mostly in Russian, the posts were critical of the Obama administration’s insufficiently aggressive stances toward Russia and Facebook’s alleged pro-Russia bias.

“Dan is likely the most intelligent person I’ve ever met,” says Yuri Somov, who struck up a friendship with Rapoport in Washington. “And I’ve met people like Kissinger and Greenspan. I’m a professional interpreter. He was incredibly intense and very much larger than life, but in a good way.” Somov describes himself as apolitical, but says his friend was different: “He was a romantic. He believed things could be changed and he believed he could be a part of those changes.”

Washington, Somov says, was probably not Rapoport’s natural milieu. In 2016, after divorcing, he left town, moving to Kyiv, where the tumultuous scene might have represented an opportunity for someone whose first experience was in crisis-racked post-Soviet Moscow. His ex-wife and kids stayed here. “He was too different from the world of U.S. business,” Somov says. “He probably felt closer to home in Ukraine than in the U.S.”

Somov, who says he’s been devastated by Rapoport’s death, is among those who thinks the suicide story is completely plausible.

“Not every unexplained death in Russia is the KGB or the GRU bumping someone off,” says Fiona Hill, the former senior Russia specialist at the White House, who met Rapoport through Somov.

Rapoport had remarried in Kyiv to a Ukrainian virologist; they’d started a new family. After the war began, Rapoport relocated his wife and child to Denmark but stayed in Ukraine — and then came to Washington this summer, shipping his dog as well. Missing them, friends say, left him distraught.

“He was having to start over again for the third time in 10 years,” Somov says. “We did not meet up, which I will regret for the rest of my life because he probably needed me. When he asked me, ‘lunch tomorrow?’ after not seeing each other for several years, I should have read between the lines. I must have asked him something, but I remember the answer, which is still in my phone: ‘It has been a very difficult three months.’ From him, particularly, that’s saying a lot. More than notable, it was extraordinary. No matter how things worked, he kept up appearances.”

Ponomarev also says Rapoport didn’t seem great when they barbecued in Washington during a visit this summer. He said Rapoport had cut way back on drinking after his second marriage, but was drinking heavily when they met up. “It was very clear he was depressed that he was not with his family,” he says. Still, it didn’t seem desperate. “I cannot exclude that it was a suicide, but in general nothing pointed in this direction when we met. If I would feel like something like this could happen, I would talk to him more.”

But for a number of people in Rapoport’s anxious political circles, it’s hard to put stock in coincidences. “He was making plans for the future. He had plans for the next week and the week after,” says Jason Jay Smart, a Kyiv-based American political consultant who says he spoke weekly with Rapoport over the past half-decade. “It’s not something someone who was planning on jumping off a building would do.”

And there’s history to make Russian skeptics suspicious of Washington authorities’ investigative chops. In 2015, Mikhail Lesin, a former media aide to the Russian president, died in Washington’s Dupont Circle Hotel. Initially reported as a heart attack, the medical examiner later determined that he had died of blunt force trauma. But the report was later amended to say that the death had been an accident, the injuries sustained possibly from falling off a bed after he returned to his hotel room extremely drunk. Prosecutors closed the case. “That was outrageous,” Ponomarev says.

Closer to Rapoport — but further from politics — his partner in Soho Rooms died in an apparent suicide after his own fall from a building, in Moscow in 2017. One Rapoport friend speculated that foul play could be business-related rather than political, though Satter says the two aren’t so easily separated. “Even if it was just business interests, that doesn’t mean the Russian intelligence service wasn’t involved,” he says. “They often use these disputes.”

The Russian embassy did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

The FBI says it does not comment about whether it is investigating alongside the locals. And the medical examiner’s report, alas, may not be here to clear things up anytime soon: All “unnatural” deaths, even open-and-shut suicides, get sent for a report. They can take up to 90 days.

In the meantime, people who find the death fishy — as well as people who merely find it heartbreaking — can probably see evidence in Rapoport’s final Facebook post, three days before his death. It was a photo of Marlon Brando’s Apocalypse Now character, accompanied by the character’s haunting last words: “The horror, the horror.”

Commentary: No rules for USA

(Xinhua) 16:22, August 26, 2022

BEIJING, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- Some U.S. politicians keep preaching "upholding the rules-based international order." But in reality, the country proves to be the biggest destroyer of rules and order, and their repeated reference means nothing but their preference for U.S. hegemony.

As a founding member of the United Nations and the world's only superpower, the United States constantly places its domestic law above international law and observes international rules only as it sees fit. This is the biggest damage being done to the international order.

While asking other countries to uphold the international order, the United States has been obstructing negotiations for a verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention, and refusing to ratify multiple international conventions including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The United States has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and other organizations, even the Trans-Pacific Partnership it had advocated.

The United States' so-called "rules-based international order" is actually a bunch of rules made by a handful of countries to serve the selfish interests of the United States in seeking hegemony.

John Bolton, former White House national security adviser, said earlier in an interview unashamedly that he had helped plan coups in foreign countries. Bolton's admission is so revealing.

Leading U.S. politicians trumpet the so-called "rules-based international order" for one purpose: to ensure that the United States can easily interfere in other countries' affairs and overthrow their governments at its own will. This is exactly the kind of "rules" and "order" that they want to defend.

For years, the United States has created political unrest in Latin America, played a part in the "Arab Spring", and instigated color revolutions in Europe and Asia. The United States has wantonly invaded and interfered militarily in other countries, killing over 800,000 people and turning more than 20 million into refugees in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. The United States says little, however, about how many innocent lives have been lost and how many families torn apart as a steep price for this order it championed.

The Taiwan question has always been the most important and the most sensitive issue at the heart of China-U.S. relations. The China-U.S. Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations, published in December 1978, states: "The Government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China."

However, the United States has substantially eased restrictions on official relations with Taiwan and increased military contacts with the region, as evidenced by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan earlier this month. The United States' deviation from the one-China principle will surely take a huge toll on the mutual trust between the two countries.

The one-China principle, reaffirmed by United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 2758, is an integral part of the post-WWII international order, an established international consensus and a widely-accepted basic norm in international relations.

By breaching the one-China principle, the United States is also challenging the post-war international order, which will surely be met with wide opposition from the international community.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed in June that they've sought to build an imperfect but liberal order. But judging from the U.S. deeds, it is neither liberal nor order; it is hegemony, highhandedness and bullying, and an attempt of the United States and a small number of other countries to make rules that suit themselves.

People across the world will not want the kind of "imperfect" but "liberal" order peddled by the United States. What they want is an equal and shared right to security, development and prosperity for all. It is high time that the United States reflects on itself and takes real responsibilities for world peace and development. 

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Hongyu)

He worked for the Canadian embassy in Afghanistan. Now, he's being told to move into a shelter

Sat, August 27, 2022 

Nearly a year after he set foot in Canada, Mohammad Fahim Rahmani's support through the federal Resettlement Assistance Program is coming to an end — even as his parents' papers languish in the processing queue with the federal government. Now he's being told to leave for a shelter and sign up for social assistance. (Darek Zdzienicki/CBC - image credit)

Before life as he knew it turned upside down with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Mohammad Fahim Rahmani worked with the Canadian embassy.

Now, he's being told to pack his things, move to a Toronto shelter and apply for social assistance.

That's because, nearly a year after he set foot in Canada, the support he and his family received through the federal Resettlement Assistance Program is coming to an end — even as his parents' permanent residence paperwork languish in the processing queue with the federal government. The program provides up to a year of direct financial support, temporary accommodation and referrals to community-based services as needed.

"We didn't come from Afghanistan to live in shelters," Rahmani, 30, told CBC Toronto outside the Toronto hotel where he's currently staying.

"Everybody wants to get their documents, start their life and their own place and start their job. And the one year of opportunities I lost — who's going to pay for that?"

Rahmani doesn't want to be on social assistance. He doesn't want to live in a government-funded hotel. But as long as his parents' papers are outstanding, he says their lives are on hold and that a shelter isn't an option.

'Nobody will help us after that'

His own papers have since been processed, but Rahmani says he hasn't been able to move on and find work because his parents don't speak English and need his help day-to-day while they await processing. In the meantime, he fears moving from the government-paid hotel to a shelter could mean falling through the cracks of a system he never should have had to navigate.

"My biggest fear is if we move, unfortunately nobody will help us after that," Rahmani said.

He's not alone.

More than a year after the federal government committed to settle 40,000 Afghan refugees in Canada, it's welcomed less than half that. Many still wait for their papers to be processed by the federal government. Until then, multiple refugees have told CBC News they have no social insurance numbers and can't get work — their lives on hold.

CBC Toronto spoke to two different immigration lawyers about the refugees' situation. One said as far as he knew there was no option for Afghan refugees to receive work permits while awaiting processing. Another said it was in fact possible.

To clarify the confusion, CBC News asked Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada multiple times about the refugees' claims. The department could not provide a response as to the question of whether the refugees could work while their paperwork was being processed.

It's shameful the Canadian government has dropped the ball on the resettlement procedures for these Afghan nationals. - Robert Blanshay, immigration lawyer

As a housekeeping manager for the Canadian embassy in Kabul, Rahmani thought he was one of the lucky ones. He managed to evacuate with his parents and sister in tow before the Kabul airport closed, arriving in Canada on Aug. 28, 2021.

In the time since, he's been moved from one hotel to another to a third, and back to the first.

Rahmani says he's made multiple inquiries about the status of his parents' permanent residence application, eventually learning there were concerns over his father's past involvement in the Afghan military.

That's despite being cleared to come to Canada in the first place with documents issued by the IRCC, he says.

"My family was not any terrorist. They didn't come illegally," he said.

Rahmani now fears his father could be deported right back to a country run by a group Canada deems a terrorist organization before the government gets through its processing backlog to consider the 63-year-old's application for permanent residence.

'I want to work, I want to study'

Hikmatullah Barakzai, 28, came to Canada with his brother, who was an interpreter for the Canadian army. He arrived on Oct. 10 with his young daughter and pregnant wife, who delivered their baby at the hotel where they were put up.

With his son now six months old, the entire family is still living in a single hotel room, now a different hotel. There's no kitchen, no park nearby and no answer as to how long their lives will remain in limbo, he says.

Submitted by Hikmatullah Barakzai

"I have family, I have kids. I want to work. I want to study. My wife wants to study," he said. "Everything is stopped and just waiting. But I don't know for how long."

Barakzai says he asked his government-desginated settlement service provider COSTI Immigrant Services about applying for a work permit, but was told he should simply wait for his permanent residence paperwork to go through. COSTI is a Toronto-based immigrant services agency funded by the IRCC to deliver settlement assistance, language training, job search assistance and other such services to government-assisted refugees and other eligible newcomers.

Rahmani says it was also COSTI that told him it was time to leave the hotel.

CBC News contacted COSTI for comment, however in a statement, the agency said little more than: "There are no families at the hotel beyond a year."

All other questions were referred to the IRCC.

In an email to CBC News, IRCC spokesperson Nancy Caron said the department is "aware that some Afghans in Canada remain temporarily in hotels as we work to finalize their immigration application status."

"For Afghans whose cases are complex, processing will take longer as we work to receive information and work through their application," the statement said, adding it "continues to raise awareness around the current housing challenges that many individuals are facing by working together with our federal and provincial counterparts."

The department did not say why refugees are limited to one year of hotel accommodation if their paperwork is still under review, or address concerns about falling through the cracks if they do as they're told and move to a shelter.

Canada 'has dropped the ball' on Afghans: lawyer

Toronto-based immigration lawyer Robert Blanshay says Canada needs to be more forthcoming about the reasons why so many Afghan refugees are still facing a bureaucratic holdup.

"It's shameful the Canadian government has dropped the ball on the resettlement procedures for these Afghan nationals," he said.

"They've made their way through the most harrowing of circumstances that one could ever imagine, only to finally arrive in Canada and sort of exhale and breathe a sigh of relief to realize that they've got a different set of struggles."

And to those who think living out of hotels might not be so bad, he says, "There's been a lot of nightmare stories."

Meanwhile, as the months pass, Barakzai is pleading for Canada to act faster so that his little ones will soon be able to have a home beyond the four walls of their single hotel room.

"We left everything back home," he said. "We lost everything. Now we are here, waiting for your help."

"Please pay attention to us."

LAFLAMME SCANDAL; 

AGEISM, SEXISM, HUBRIS & STUPIDITY

'Fire Michael Melling': Viewers call for CTV exec's leave to be made 'permanent'

Chris Stoodley

·Lifestyle and News Editor

Sat, August 27, 2022 

As "CTV News" head Michael Melling goes on leave following long-time anchor Lisa LaFlamme's recent termination, some people are calling on Bell Media to make his absence "permanent."

According to an internal email sent to Bell Media news team members Friday afternoon, Melling went on leave on his own accord in hopes of spending more time with his loved ones.

"Michael Melling has decided to take leave from his current role effective immediately to spend time with this family," reads a note sent by Bell senior vice president of content development and news Karine Moses.

"His decision reflects our shared desire to support the newsroom and do what's best to help the team move past the current circumstances to focus on delivering the stories that matter to Canadians."

Moses added in her memo that Richard Gray, who's currently a regional general manager for the eastern region, will step in for Melling.

However, Bell president and CEO Mirko Bibic posted his own statement on LinkedIn on Friday, addressing some of the "heavy criticism" and "concerns" people have raised against the media giant, while noting that Melling's absence wasn't a personal decision.

Bell president and CEO Mirko Bibic wrote a LinkedIn post addressing some of the "heavy criticism" and "concerns" people have raised, while mentioning that "CTV News" head Michael Melling was placed on leave "effective immediately, pending the outcome" of a workplace review.

"To address concerns raised regarding the working environment in the newsroom, we have begun an independent review involving confidential interviews with all newsroom employees who choose to participate. Any necessary changes that become evident will be implemented swiftly to ensure a respectful, unified workplace," Bibic wrote.

"I also want to address the situation of our vice president of national news, Michael Melling, who has been the subject of various allegations. Michael is on leave effective immediately, pending the outcome of the workplace review that is proceeding."

Amid the news, people have taken to social media to call for Bell to permanently terminate Melling.

Over the past couple of weeks, Melling was accused of questioning Lisa LaFlamme's decision to let her hair go grey, and for interfering with CTV's news coverage following LaFlamme's dismissal.

On Aug. 15, LaFlamme voiced her own experience with Bell Media when she was informed on June 29 that her contract would be ending. After spending 35 years working for the company, LaFlamme explained how she felt "blindsided" in a video — which has since been viewed more than 4.5 million times — posted to her Twitter account.

Following LaFlamme's news of her contract being terminated, a former "etalk" host also spoke out about alleged mistreatment and gender discrimination.

Danielle Graham, who spent 17 years working for Bell Media, revealed she also had her contract suddenly terminated, and was only compensated three months severance.

"March 1: I brought to management's attention a situation where it was clear I was being discriminated against as a woman. I was ignored and laughed at," she began. "March 4: I forwarded this example of the blatant gender discrimination I was facing to HR. March 7: HR told me to file a formal complaint and that an investigation would commence. March 8: A meeting to discuss these issues was set for March 11."

However, things quickly took a turn for the worse, according to Graham.

"Instead, on March 11, I was re-scheduled to be in the office for a 'shoot,'" she wrote. "As I was getting ready in my office, I was suddenly told by management, 'Your services are no longer required.' I was told it was a 'business decision.'"

In a second slide, Graham went on to explain more of her experience with being let go so suddenly.

"I was not allowed to say goodbye on-air or to contribute to the messaging surrounding my departure, despite several requests from my representative to do so," she penned. "I was given three months severance for my 17 years there.

"I'm proud to stand in solidarity and fight alongside all women who have been mistreated, discriminated against and who have been retaliated against for speaking up."

  

'Someone should be held accountable': LaFlamme's exit from CTV sparks internal investigation, petition for her return

Elianna Lev

August 19, 2022·

Reinstate Lisa LaFlamme as Chief Anchor at CTV News petition

The trajectory of CTV's former lead anchor, Lisa LaFlamme's dismissal from the network has led to loud feedback from viewers and now an internal investigation into how it was all handled.

Earlier this week, the veteran journalist took to her social media to inform her followers that her contract with CTV was not renewed, despite having two years left. She described being “blindsided” by the decision, which was described by the network as a “business decision” sparked by “changing viewer habits”.

Many on social media were outraged by the move, describing it as sexist and ageist. There are reports of conversation around LaFlamme’s decision to go gray, with some wondering if that was part of her exit from the network. A petition on Change.org has since been launched to reinstate LaFlamme back to her former job.

Bell Media, the parent company of the network, has since put out a statement saying they regret the way the situation was handled and they take the accusations around it very seriously. They added that an independent, third-party internal workplace review will be taking place in the near future.

Anil Verma is a professor emeritus of industrial relations and HR management with the University of Toronto. He says Bell Media appears to be in damage control at the moment because they know they’ve done damage to themselves.

“I don’t think it went well for them, in fact it went badly,” he tells Yahoo Canada News.

He’s unsure whether CTV was within their legal right to not renew LaFlamme’s contract if she wasn’t needed, saying it could be a matter of personalities clashing. However, a number of people were likely involved with the final decision and still managed to handle it poorly.

“You can’t argue that she wasn’t doing her job properly, that wouldn't stand in front of an arbitrator,” he says. “She could justly sue CTV and win a big settlement because she has lots of evidence to show that performance on the job wasn’t an issue and she was fired for reasons unrelated to her ability to do the job.”

When it comes to proving the allegations of ageism and sexism, Verma says that would be more of a challenge to prove, as you’d have to demonstrate there was a systemic issue of demoting women at the network.

Still, he points out that not only have CTV lost their lead anchor on the network, they’ve invited a tsunami of bad publicity.

“Someone should be held accountable for that,” he says. “If you’d done it right, you wouldn’t have to do an internal investigation.”