People Are Divided Over Martin Freeman’s Comments About His Controversial Movie “Miller’s Girl”

In the movie, Jenna Ortega plays 18-year-old high school student Cairo Sweet, who decides to seduce her creative writing class teacher, Jonathan Miller, played by Martin Freeman.

The two characters already have an intellectual connection, with Cairo at the top of Mr. Miller’s class. After spending more time together, the two end up kissing in the rain.

After this, Cairo writes an incredibly graphic erotic story for Mr. Miller’s class that details a sexual relationship between a teacher and a student. When Mr. Miller demands she rewrite it, she sends the story to the school’s vice principal as revenge — suggesting that it was inspired by her real-life affair with her teacher. 

"There was many, many people throughout this process, engaging with [Jenna] to make sure that it was consistent with what she was comfortable with, and she was very determined and very sure of what she wanted to do," Kristina told the Daily Mail at the time. 

"Part of my job, too, is supporting her decisions. I adapt to whatever is the comfort level of my actors, especially on a production like this where there is a large age gap between the actors," she added, emphasizing that “continuous consent” was given by Jenna. 

The publication goes on to state that Martin thinks “stories about difficult subjects can be tainted by association,” with the British actor then referring to the 1993 movie Schindler’s List as he continued: “And that’s a shame. Are we gonna have a go at Liam Neeson for being in a film about the Holocaust?”

“Like, that's the point. You're not supposed to like the character or their situation,” another user agreed. “This movie is about a student and a teacher, of course there's an age gap, and Freeman is saying you're not supposed to approve of that, either. All films and novels aren't supposed to be about perfect people in ideal situations, that's not the point of them. They're not insisting you approve, they're depicting nuanced situations where people are acting inappropriately.”

But others argued that what Martin said glossed over the broader issue with the film, with one critic pointing out: “if you actually watched the movie, then you’d know it’s jenna’s character that ‘seduces’ this poor unassuming english teacher and tries to ‘ruin his life’ which is what makes the movie gross. it’s not bc it depicts an age gap relationship, it’s bc the teenage girl is depicted as having all the power and agency in this dynamic which is seriously damaging for real life cases of teachers grooming their students.”

“He is correct that obviously the movie wasn’t saying it was perfectly fine for an adult man to be with a teenage girl and if people were criticising the movie for that then they are at best misinformed and at worst willfully obtuse,” somebody else reasoned. “Most of the criticism of the movie I came across was focused much more on the ‘poor innocent adult man is harrassed by EVIL teenage girl’ trope and I can’t help wondering if his response to the criticism, also, is at best misinformed and at worst willfully obtuse.”