One Thing About Scarlett Johansson: Her Legal Action Wig is Always On

The Friday Post.

Live from New York … Hung Up! You can read an event recap here.

Scarlett Johansson at The Albies at the New York Public Library on September 28, 2023. (Photo: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

The way men misunderstood Her, the 2013 Spike Jonze movie, should be studied. (I saw a movie about a mustache. My friend Hilton memorably calls Her a movie about an airpod. Men saw a movie about a perfect woman with no wants or needs, just an, um, “old soul” with a sumptuous voice.)

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, sought Her star Scarlett Johansson’s voice for a new chatbot assistant feature. He’d asked Bryan Lourd, Johansson’s agent, about setting a meeting, per the Wall Street Journal, and spent months trying to get Johansson involved. When the new OpenAI feature went live, Johansson and her team said the voice sounded “eerily similar” to her own. So Scarlett Johansson did what Scarlett Johansson is wont to do: she put on her legal action wig. She released a statement: “After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer. Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named ‘Sky’ sounded like me. “When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference. Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word, ‘her’ — a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human.”

In response, Altman apologized. “We cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn't communicate better,” Altman wrote in a statement to NPR. But the damage was done.

Scarlett Johansson kind of strikes me as the white Azealia Banks. She has two modes: radically right or radically wrong. She will stand on business every time, for better or for worse. The bad: Ghost in the Shell, her nonstop defenses of Woody Allen. The good: She divorced Ryan Reynolds. She went up against Disney in a contract dispute about Black Widow getting sent to streaming prematurely, and the company (under the direction of Bob Chapek) grossly tried to shame her for making money from the movie she starred in. “The company included her salary in their press statement in an attempt to weaponize her success as an artist and businesswoman as if that were something she should be ashamed of,” Johansson’s agent, Bryan Lourd, said in response to Disney’s statement. 

Puck calls Johansson’s legal case “moot,” and suggests an aim beyond just a legal victory. “In a back-and-forth of legal letters, did not ask OpenAI for any money,” ‘What I’m Hearing’ author Matthew Belloni wrote. “Rather, she and her agent, Bryan Lourd, see this as an opportunity to plant a flag on the A.I. issue and generate tons of attention. It worked.” I scrolled past an NYT push alert this week about two actors who say an AI company cloned their voice. But Scarlett Johansson saying “let’s do it baby I know the law?” I’m clicking immediately.¹

Scarlett Johansson loves the law to a Legally Blonde degree, to an Aaron Sorkin character degree. Scarlett Johansson is always gonna see you in court. She’s very Law Roach saying “Do you see any lace” — Her legal action wig is permanently applied. 

The first episode of “Lemme Say This,” the Wondery podcast co-hosted by me and Peyton Dix, is out!

In case you missed it: I’m hosting a weekly pop culture podcast! Nothing about the frequency of this newsletter, or the time I devote to it, is changing. Now you can listen to me rant and rave/get the ick from my speaking voice (see below lmao) once a week. Subscribe here, wherever you get your podcasts. 

Short cuts:

Today is Roger Deakins’ birthday. Awoooga. 

Me and Roger Deakins: Now It Can Be Told

Kelly Rowland explained those photos of her speaking with a security guard on a Cannes red carpet: “There were other women that attended that carpet who did not quite look like me and they didn’t get scolded or pushed off or told to get off. And, I stood my ground.” (Via AP)

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The Bear returns June 27. (Trailer here)

Romy Mars, who devoted Hung Up readers will recall is the lisan al gaib² of nepo babies, released two songs. They’re nice!

That’s all this week! Thank you for reading. This weekend I will be horizontal on my sofa mainlining Real Housewives of New York. I’ll leave you with this:

1. “This seemed to strike a real chord,” an industry executive told Reuters. “It kind of puts a human face on it … There’s a well-known tech company that did something to a person we know.” https://www.reuters.com/technology/scarlett-johanssons-openai-feud-rekindles-hollywood-fear-artificial-intelligence-2024-05-23/

2. Dune-speak for “chosen one.”