Richard Dreyfuss tried on dresses at Massachusetts consignment shop before anti-trans rant: report
Richard Dreyfuss was seen trying on nearly a half-dozen dresses at a local consignment shop just before he was accused of launching a homophobic, anti-trans rant at a “Jaws” screening late last month — leaving employees at the Pride-supporting store miffed that he duped them into helping him.
Surveillance footage first obtained by TMZ shows the “American Graffiti” actor being set upon by a group of smiling, cheery women at Worthy Girl Consignment in Beverly, Mass., who help him dress, then shepherd him to a store mirror to check his outfit.
Dreyfuss puts on a number of dresses — and throws in some awkward dance moves for good measure — before picking out a floral blue number that cost about $21, TMZ said.
Later that evening, the 76-year-old actor reportedly wore the getup onstage at The Cabot Theater, which was hosting “An Evening with Richard Dreyfuss + Jaws screening,” where he slid into a bizarre rant about Barbra Streisand, transgender youth and gender affirmation and the Academy Awards’ inclusivity rules.
His monologue enraged many attendees, who were hoping he’d regale them with tales about filming the 1975 Steven Spielberg classic that scared a generation of kids away from the ocean.
“We walked out of his interview tonight along with hundreds of others because of his racist homophobic misogynistic rant,” one person commented on the Cabot’s recent Facebook post.
Another commenter said the audience thought it would be “a light, fun evening listening to stories and anecdotes about RD’s time on the Vineyard making Jaws.”
“This was disgusting,” the person wrote. “How could the Cabot not have vetted his act better. Apparently (I found out too late), he has a reputation for spewing this kind of racist, homophobic, misogynistic bullcrap … We did NOT get what we paid for.”
Workers at Worthy Girl Consignment were also fuming — with one employee telling TMZ that the actor’s rant was directly targeting their most frequent clients from the LGBTQ community.
The employee also told the outlet they thought the “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” actor was just a cute, little old guy trying on dresses — and they had no idea what his intentions were.
The store seems to be an odd choice for Dreyfuss to wander into, since a conspicuous Pride flag is draped from the store’s façade.
After Dreyfuss’s facepalming statements, The Cabot Theater sent out an apology email to attendees and expressed their regret in a statement obtained by the Hollywood Reporter.
“The views expressed by Mr. Dreyfuss do not reflect the values of inclusivity and respect that we uphold as an organization,” the missive read. “We deeply regret the distress that this has caused to many of our patron.”
“We are in active dialogue with our patrons about their experience and are committed to learning from this event how to better enact our mission of entertaining, educating and inspiring our community.”
Worthy Girl, meanwhile, has apparently tried to turn a negative into a positive by designing a Pride shirt referencing the incident, TMZ said.
The proceeds will go to the North Shore Alliance for LGBTQ+ Youth.
It’s not clear whether Dreyfuss will buy one of those, too.
