The unusual star of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival may have been a staff member who has not been named. This is not a good thing.
This month, famous people from all over the world attended the important event. Some of them, mostly non-white women, seemed to feel uncomfortable around the same female security guard.
Video posts on social media show Kelly Rowland, who used to be in Destiny’s Child, South Korean pop star Yoona, and Dominican actor Massiel Taveras getting into angry arguments with the staff member, who seemed to get too close to them or touch them.
This new video going around social media was posted by Sawa Pontyjska, a model from Ukraine and Miss Europe 2023. In the May 21 video, the same security guard can be seen putting her arms around Pontyjska at the top of the stairs to the red carpet and pulling her into the building. In the video, Pontyjska tries to go back down the steps, but other fair staff members stop her.
The guard’s coworkers told the Daily Mail that she was “just doing her job,” but the worker has been criticized online. Many people on social media have asked her to be fired, with some saying it looked like she was going after women of color.
Security guard rushed YoonA out of the carpet at the Cannes Film Festival.
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) May 26, 2024
The same security guard was involved in incidents with Kelly Rowland and Massiel Taveras. https://t.co/BW71PS71yN
Security guard rushed YoonA out of the carpet at the Cannes Film Festival.
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) May 26, 2024
The same security guard was involved in incidents with Kelly Rowland and Massiel Taveras. https://t.co/BW71PS71yN
Not a single security guard was harassing her pic.twitter.com/WwO5tn9CNs
— Meech (@MediumSizeMeech) May 25, 2024
In an interview with The Associated Press last week, Rowland made it sound like the event was likely caused by racism.
“The woman knows what took place.” Rowland told AP on the red carpet after the event, “I know what happened.” “And I set limits, and I stick to them.” “And that’s it.”
“There were other women on that carpet who didn’t quite look like me, and they didn’t get scolded, pushed off, or told to get off,” she said.
People know that Cannes has strict rules for the red carpet, like not letting people take selfies. It also used to have a strict rule that women could only wear high heels, but this was allegedly changed after some people didn’t like the 2015 event.
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Even though there are rules, it looks like a lot of famous people have broken them without getting caught. Vogue says that in 2023, Julia Roberts and Kristen Stewart both walked the red carpet barefoot, and Jennifer Lawerence wore flip-flops with her red dress.
The Huffington Post asked the Cannes Film Festival for a word on what happened with Pontyjska, Yoona, Taveras, and Rowland, but did not hear back right away.
