A recent story on CBS’s “The Equalizer” that addressed anti-Semitic attacks on a Jewish community touched an all-too-familiar nerve with its star, Adam Goldberg. “I’ve exposed that dark side of humanity to some degree,” he told TheWrap. “Not in any kind of physical way but certainly in social and political ways, and certainly at different points in my career.”
His role as intelligent Jewish Army soldier Stanley “Fish” Mellish in Steven Spielberg’s 1998 epic World War II film “Saving Private Ryan” is one of his most “intense examples” of feeling shrouded in hatred for his religious beliefs. brings to mind.
“It’s not unfamiliar territory, but in many ways, I was surprised by how I reacted to the emotion and the material once we were shooting it,” he said. The fish death scene in the movie still sends shivers down my spine and is not for the faint of heart. In it, Goldberg’s character is lying wounded on the floor of a bombed-out building in German when a Nazi comes upon him and slowly – very slowly , puts knife in his chest.
That “Saving Private Ryan” scene was so painful for his mother to watch during its premiere in ’98 that she said she hasn’t seen the movie since. She was mad that her son didn’t warn her about it.
“I felt much, much more than I thought I would, I think partly because, not unlike the character, I feel a certain distance from my Jewishness. I own it, and in many ways have been compelled to own it, which is what I do for a living, but also, I feel, to defend myself and my culture and the Jewish people In a big way, whether it’s in social media or through the work I’ve done as an actor,” Goldberg said. “But yeah, I found it, on the one hand, depressing and familiar and on the other, empowering. And then dynamic.”
Whether Jewish or not, for many watching such scenes in the episodes “Saving” or “The Equalizer,” the feelings are incredibly angry and incredibly sad that hatred can run so deep.
“Yeah, of course I thought so. I mean, really for the last several years, you know obviously,” he began and paused. “You know, I first started experiencing personal … a kind of mind-blowing amount, you know, of hate directed in a way that I certainly could recognize was very Was spammy. It wasn’t really so personal, but still, I have a folder or an album, I think, titled ‘Nazis’ on screenshots on my phone to the point where I’m actually considering doing a podcast. where I was going to interview some of these people who were trolling me on Twitter. This was a few years ago, and I got some of them to agree that… I think That every person who belongs to a culture that has faced cultural prejudice and racism and oppression at any level has certainly been the victim of a lot of bitterness.
Eventually, he decided against the podcast idea, but occasionally he would post screenshots of some of these interactions, and people were absolutely hooked. “Shocked,” he said. “You know, like, what decade is this? And yet to me, it’s like, it’s like that every day. I think unless you’re right in the firing line, I think for people to believe It’s hard to do.
Goldberg said that the sad irony about this particular type of prejudice – antisemitism – is that it is one of the many ways it does not exist, but rather “Jews are controlling the narrative.”
“The whole country, the whole world, I think, has been gaslighted to some varying degree over the last several years. Obviously, it was one of these, headlines-type shows,” Goldberg said of “The Equalizer” episode. In which his character reconnects with his Jewish faith while witnessing a string of hate crimes terrorizing a local community. “But there have been many more incidents since we shot this and some that just don’t get reported.”
“I think ‘hate’,” he said, “just to put it more simply, over the years, it’s not that it wasn’t lying dormant to some extent, but it was just … kicked up the hornet’s nest, you know?”
