A week after the news broke that she’d be leaving her position of 15 years, Pascal sat down with Tina Brown on Wednesday, addressing the hack and its consequences for the first time publicly.
Less than a week after leaving her position as Sony Pictures chief, Amy Pascal sat down with Tina Brown during the Women in the World summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, and spoke openly about being at the center of the largest cyber hack in history, dealing with a massive security breech — which included the leak of her personal emails — and what really caused her to leave her position behind.
“All the women here are doing incredible things in this world. All I did was get fired,” Pascal joked to Brown.
1. On the moment she realized the extent of the hack:
“I ran this company and I had to worry about everybody who was really scared…People were really scared…But nagging in the back of my mind, I kept calling [IT] and being like, They don’t have our emails. Tell me they don’t have our emails. But then they did. That was a bad moment. And you know what you write in emails.”
2. On trying to deal with the exposed emails:
“There was this horrible moment where I realized there was absolutely nothing at all that I could do about whether I’d hurt people, whether I’d betrayed people, whether I’d said things I didn’t mean. I couldn’t protect anyone, not their feelings, not what they thought of me. And it was horrible because that’s how I figured I did my job for all of my life. And it was also strangely freeing because all of a sudden it was just what it was.”
3. On a leaked email from producer Scott Rudin to Pascal in which he called Angelina Jolie a “minimally talented spoiled brat.”
“The first person I talked to was Angie after that email. Yes, everybody understood because we all live in this weird thing together called Hollywood. If we all actually were nice, it wouldn’t work.”
4. On the press publishing her emails:
“I’m not supposed to say anything about that. But I will say that…People found reasons that going through my trash and printing it was an OK thing to do. They found a way to justify that. And they have to live with that.” (via Re/code)
5. On what the experience taught her about writing emails:
“I did learn that you should always say exactly what you think directly to people all of the time and not maybe try to manage it, because you’re still feeling what you were feeling that you didn’t say and then it comes out in another way and I think that was maybe a really good lesson.”
6. On women being paid less than men:
“I run a business. People want to work for less money, I’ll pay them less money. I don’t call them up and go, ‘Can I give you some more?’ Because that’s not what you do when you run a business. The truth is is what women have to do is not work for less money, they have to walk away. People shouldn’t be so grateful for jobs…People should know what they’re worth and say no. And they will.”
7. On the roles available to women in film:
“I think that the most important thing that we can do in our business is make movies with female protagonists and movies with female villains and movies where women are the plot of the movie is about them, where their actions have consequences in the story. Because the worst thing you can do is just be on the sidelines.”
8. On actors:
“They’re bottomless pits of need. You’ve never seen anything like it. They are so great. They’re this magical thing that no one else can be. It’s a duality of both things. They’re filled with the need to be loved and to be great, but that’s because they’re magical.”
9. On The Interview being a bad movie:
“You don’t get to choose what you stand up for.” (Via Aarti Shahani/Twitter)
10. On being a working mom:
“You’re guilty all the time no matter where you are… But I was born to work. I wasn’t that great of a student, I wasn’t that great at anything else. I loved working. I loved working when I was little. I got my first job at 13. That’s what makes me feel good about myself. I don’t even know what that means. But I loved working. And if that’s who you are, that’s what you have to do. I’d be no good to anybody if I wasn’t doing what I was meant to do.”
11. On leaving the job she had for almost 15 years:
“I’m scared. I’m 56, it’s not exactly the time you want to start all over again. But it’s kind of great. And I have to. And it’s going to be a new adventure for me.”
Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyorley/revelations-from-former-sony-pictures-chief-amy-pascals-f
