Does Anyone Care About ‘Amsterdam’ Director David O. Russell’s Alleged Abusive, Predatory Behavior?

In 2012, the director’s niece, Nichole Peloqui, filed a police report accusing Russell of groping her breasts while they were at the gym, shortly after Russell had offered to help Peloqui with ab exercises. Peloqui was undergoing gender-reassignment surgery at the time. After she filed the police report, Russell told officers that his niece had been asking for it—in his words, according to the police report, “acting very provocative toward him.” At the time, he told The Wrap he “emphatically denies any wrongdoing and has cooperated fully with the authorities.”

In 2016, Adams said in an interview with GQ that Russell regularly made her cry during their work on American Hustle. “He did [make me cry]—I was really just devastated on set,” Adams said. That sort of cruelty had allegedly been going on for years: In 1999, George Clooney reportedly got into a physical altercation with Russell on the set of Three Kings over Russell’s treatment of crew members and extras—a rumor Clooney all but confirmed in a 2004 interview. “Quite honestly, if he comes near me, I’ll sock him right in the fucking mouth,” Clooney told a magazine. In a separate interview, Russell alleged Clooney had instigated the fight, and echoed Clooney’s hostility: “I never physically attacked him. If I ran into him, I’d say, ‘Shut the fuck up, you lying-ass bitch.’”

Celebrity feud gossip—like that produced by Don’t Worry Darling—is a fun distraction. But abusive behavior (especially in a workplace) deserves intense media scrutiny—as do the choices made by actors to work with the director involved. The contrast between the (fun!) circus surrounding Darling’s relatively innocuous drama about its director and the swept-under-the-rug allegations against Amsterdam’s director is a textbook case of the double standards women in power face—which probably contributes to why there are so few, especially when it comes to celebrated film directors.

Amsterdam comes out in less than two weeks, and, in a wish-fulfillment sort of way, I look forward to members of the media pressing Russell the way Stephen Colbert grilled Olivia Wilde.