“How am I feeling? Oh God, I don’t know,” Scarlett Johansson says on a recent call with Vanity Fair. “That’s a loaded question.” With mere days until Kamala Harris faces off against Donald Trump on Election Day, stars really are just like us—anxiously awaiting the results of the 2024 presidential race.
“I feel cautiously optimistic, whatever that means,” she adds with a laugh. “I hope people remember to vote—are not complacent and participate. I feel if people vote, we’ll be in good shape.”
Luring voters to the polls is often the biggest battle, says Johansson, a Herculean feat fit for the screen’s premier superheroes. So in recent weeks, the actor formerly known as Black Widow turned to the Avengers group text. “We don’t just rib each other. We also share information about different events or fundraisers,” says Johansson. Over text, she reminded her fellow Marvel Cinematic Universe alumni, “We’ve got a lot of powerful people on this thread, and it would be great to unite in hopefully creating a bit of a viral moment for Kamala.”
The result of that call to action is a new Get Out the Video video featuring Johansson, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Danai Gurira, and Paul Bettany that debuts exclusively with Vanity Fair. “I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so many immediate responses from these people,” she tells VF. “Normally people trickle in, but immediately the group was super excited about it.”
Aligning the schedules of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars was daunting. “Everybody is so busy and insanely spread out,” she says. “Chris is shooting a movie in Bulgaria. Robert is currently treading the planks on Broadway. Mark is doing a movie. Danai is canvassing in Atlanta. Don is, I don’t know, probably on a golf course somewhere,” she jokes. “I was in the Grand Canyon. We were somehow able to get everybody on Zoom at the same time, which was crazy and hilarious.”
Although Shazam’s Zachary Levi recently referred to Trump’s closest comrades as the “Avengers,” the actual squad is throwing its support behind Harris. In the video, they attempt to craft a punchy catchphrase for the current vice president, riffing on moments from their respective movies—including Iron Man and Black Panther. “It just immediately turned into people trying to one up each other with one-liners,” says Johansson. “Robert and Mark, bickering like two old ladies. And of course, I’m the person that’s just trying to organize everybody. It’s very similar to what our dynamic is in the films. It was wonderful to feel everybody assemble around it, and hopefully it will engage our fans in the process of voting.”
The video ends with a link to IWillVote.com, a site featuring resources for checking voter registration status, finding your polling location, and learning more about the voting process ahead of November 5. Johansson acknowledges that people are still processing “a tumultuous several years,” but says it’s vital to focus on the future. “You’re not really voting for four years, you’re voting for eight. I’ve certainly met people who are just disenfranchised. They feel very much like there’s some inevitable outcome,” she continues. “That kind of fatigue is what leads to complacency. I just hope people exercise their right to vote and participate, especially young people, because obviously it’s their future.”
Johansson says she worries about the irrevocable harm another Trump presidency would wreak on her children, including the son she shares with Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost. “My daughter is 10 years old, and I am thinking about how much damage is done—not just politically and socially, but also environmentally, under the Trump administration,” she says. “It feels almost like an emergency. It feels very urgent to support the opposite of that.”
It’s not only about combating Trump, but embracing Harris, whom Johansson calls “diplomatic in the important ways” after spending time with the candidate. “I really felt when I talked to her that she’s a fair-minded, goodhearted person who is kind,” says Johansson. “Kindness is a very important factor in who I would like to see running this country. Compassion is also another very important quality, which she has. Trump—I think he’s maybe incapable of feeling that feeling. The terrifying piece is to have a leader that is not capable of compassion.”
When asked what’s at stake in the choice between a Harris presidency and four more years of Trump, Johansson replies: “It doesn’t seem to me like four more years of Trump—it’s a new era of Trump. He completely stacked the Supreme Court and was, I think, very strategic about running not just a campaign he lost four years ago, but had in mind a master plan for how to restructure the government for the next decade-plus, supported by lobbyists who have their own interests at heart.”
Speaking out about social issues is nothing new for the Oscar-nominated actor, who recently went toe-to-toe with OpenAI. “I was raised in a very politically active, politically vocal family,” says Johansson. Her grandmother, “a staunch supporter of the Democratic party,” worked the polling sites for local and general elections—from the tenants association to the presidential race. Johansson would attend political rallies with her own mother while growing up in New York City.
“It’s important to engage in the society that you’re participating in,” she says. “People have fought for our right to be able to have a voice—have it heard and have it matter. So I’ve always been encouraged to stand up for what I believe in, and encourage other people to participate in the conversation.”
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