Kate Beckinsale is taking legal action against the producers of her 2024 thriller, Canary Black.
EW is reporting that the Underworld star has sued Anton Entertainment and producer John Zois for "negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and battery" in a May 21 amended complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The document claims that Beckinsale suffered a serious knee injury after being exposed to "dangerous and unsafe conditions" on the set of the action movie, which was released on Prime Video last year to abysmal reviews (18% on Rotten Tomatoes).
The complaint claims, "Ms. Beckinsale and her team repeatedly raised red flags regarding unsafe conditions on and off set to Defendants, including long, dangerous set days, often lasting fifteen hours, inadequate equipment and medical personnel to help manage the high physical workload and recover from the exertion off set, and failure to adequately inform Ms. Beckinsale of what stunts she was expected to perform until often the moment she had to perform it."
The actress further alleges that despite the repeated concerns, the producers "continued to recklessly and intentionally forge ahead with unsafe filming conditions, forgoing safety to maintain profit margins, and in the process, put Ms. Beckinsale in harm’s way."
Beckinsale is said to have suffered a complex meniscus tear in her left knee while filming her scenes for the movie back in 2022, and required surgery which halted production for several months. The actress agreed to return to set once her surgeon insisted that she not be asked to perform any stunts involving running, jumping, harness suspension, squatting, or kicking.
This request was allegedly disregarded, and Beckinsale reportedly suffered further aggravation of the knee after being "coerced into performing unsafe action sequences."
Beckinsale alluded to her experiences shooting Black Canary last year when she shared an Instagram post recalling some of her own toxic and abusive experiences as a show of solidarity with Deadpool and Wolverine actress Blake Lively, who had just filed a sexual harassment complaint against her It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni.
Among other things, Beckinsale said she was referred to as "that c*nt" on one set after complaining about a drunk co-star who repeatedly forgot his lines; was "felt-up" by a crew member on another project, and was deliberately hurt while shooting a stunt scene.
Representatives for Zois and Anton Entertainment have not yet responded to requests for comment.
"Everyone in EVERY industry should be taken seriously and not punished when something egregious happens to them at work -and the difference, I suppose ,in our industry is that it becomes something that is played out in the public sphere, and that can be very, very hard to take, and because it is so public and so globally public , and very quickly becomes clickbait, it can also destroy someone’s livelihood, mental health and reputation and that can be very difficult to recover from.
I’m not trying to say “wah poor actresses we all have it so difficult”- but I think this is a problem that affects every industry, it’s just that it’s a little bit more visible in ours - and I don’t want our younger generation of actresses to be facing all the same things as we all do and did, but they have it even worse because of social media and how that can be weaponised to a literally nuclear level, designed to eviscerate. And it is very, very, very easy to foment hatred against actresses, as was seen in the transcripts of conversations full of repulsively between the publicists and crisis team involved in this case .
Complaining about abuse should not beget more abuse, particularly at work where there should be inviolable safeguarding in place, and it should not be expected of women who have been harmed, insulted, hurt, shamed or in any other way abused (mostly with at least 100 witnesses) to have to be ‘one of the boys’ and take it on the chin or face retribution for having been abused in the first place. I don’t want anybody, male or female who has a legitimate complaint to then have that weaponised against them in any industry, anywhere, and I mention this in association with Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni because our industry makes things more visible due to the press and the public getting deliberately involved and led towards an opinion they don’t realise is deliberate. There are far too many casualties of this, many of whom I know personally, and it really falls to both men and women in our industry to be part of stamping this out for good."