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Rose McGowan may have given up acting — she says she was blacklisted for exposing sexual misconduct — but she isn’t abandoning Hollywood.
After helming a breakout short film titled Dawn, the Charmed and Death Proof star is planning her feature-length debut behind the camera, an animated feature called Pomerania. “It’s about a little dog who hides in the closet, and once she comes out of the closet she becomes the queen of a land called Pomerania,” McGowan tells The Hollywood Reporter during a stop at the Odessa Film Festival. “And she’s at war with Muttlandia, where all the mutts are. So, it’s all about race, breed, classism — and it’s very funny.”
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On the other end of the spectrum, McGowan is developing a psychological horror project called Sleepwalk in collaboration with Joshua Miller and Mark Fortin, writers of her 2014 short Dawn. “It’s a very haunting story,” she says, “about a young girl who sleepwalks a lot, and she blurs what is reality and what is false. It’s about how we all do that in our own lives.”
McGowan says she hopes to begin shooting on Sleepwalk next year but declined to divulge financing details for either of the projects. When it comes to acting, however, McGowan says she is done. “People in Hollywood have not been brave enough to step up for me as I stepped up for them. Because I helped to clean out the system and they haven’t been brave in return. So, I do miss performing but I feel like acting is in the past, mostly because of the lack of support that I’ve gotten.”
Commenting on her hosts in Odessa, McGowan says, despite the “dire” position of women in the region, she actually sees reason for hope. “In Eastern Europe and Russia, women have a fighting spirit,” she says. “So, I believe they are gonna get there. We just need not to live under control. And we need to understand that women are human, just like men are human. And I think if we can see our collective humanity, we could solve this problem.”
With the next presidential election looming, McGowan says she hasn’t yet picked a candidate to support. “God, it’s hard,” she said. “I guess, as long it’s not Donald Trump we’re better off. I like Elizabeth Warren, I like Kamala Harris. I actually like Pete Buttigieg. He’s an out gay candidate, and he makes the most sense to me.”
A version of this story first appeared in the Aug. 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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