Elliot Page Details Unsafe Work Environment On Flatliners

Umbrella Academy star Elliot Page is opening up about the unsafe working environment he experienced on the set of Flatliners. The film serves as a sequel and reboot to the 1997 movie and tells the story of a group of medical students working to recreate near-death experiences. The project was a relatively comfortable success, bringing in $45 million on a $19 million budget.

Unfortunately, the on-set environment was anything but comfortable, as Page wrote in his memoir, Pageboy. The Flatliners experience reportedly put Page’s life in danger, and he also alleges that he suffered through experiences with misogyny, racism, and queerphobia while filming the movie. Even when attempting to report his many unsafe and prejudiced experiences, he felt ignored and unsafe. Check out his quote below, via Entertainment Weekly:

“We were getting ready for a car stunt when Kiersey and I realized that everyone had a built-in thick seat belt, except for us. No restraints, a basic safety measure of the carefully orchestrated, expensive, and elaborate stunt that hadn’t been thought through… We looked to the various stunt crew members strapping the others in, perplexed, questioning why we weren’t being secured for the scene. ‘Why does everyone else have a safety belt but not us?’ we’d inquired… Luckily, everyone was fine, but I think back to how reckless and dangerous that was.

“How Kiersey and I were treated with such flippancy and disrespect. Regardless of a stranger’s car making it onto the closed set of a car chase, what if something just… went wrong? In retrospect, I should have known the shoot was going to be a s—show. Within our first week, someone approached Kiersey on set, sitting in her chair between takes, you only have this part because you’re Black, you know, he said to her. When I arrived [to report the incidents], I beelined to an executive’s office, a man I would later watch give a woman an unwanted massage on set. His subsequent texts to Kiersey asking her to go to dinner glared with gross… speaking of the limitations, the misogyny, the queerphobia. All that I had swallowed for years, I hauled out my insides for him to gorge on.”

Elliot Page’s Experience With Flatliners

Page’s horrifying experience with Flatliners didn’t end with a lack of seatbelts and an attempt to report the alleged behavior. He also reports that he was expected to wear a dress and heals on set, despite playing a medical student with no reason to do so. It isn’t the first time that he has been forced to deal with those issues, as he was also compelled to wear a dress on the red carpet for Juno.

Further on in his book, Page also explains that a producer approached him to ask if he was “mad that this character isn’t gay“, as Page did not want his character wearing that dress. At a time when Hollywood is still working to increase diversity and inclusion of LGBTQ+ representation, Page’s experience shows how far Hollywood still needs to grow to become truly inclusive. After all, Flatliners was a fairly large production with actors who deserved better protection than what they allegedly received.

Flatliners isn’t the first time that Page experienced discrimination on set either. He also reports that he has received homophobic threats from other stars, who then went on to insist that they are not in any way queerphobic. Page has been on a very public journey to find himself in Hollywood, and it is tragic that his experiences with Flatliners and other productions have been so filled with reports of prejudice, discrimination, and unsafe environments.

Source: Pageboy (via EW)