The Real Reason Laura Dern Was Once Blacklisted By Hollywood

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00:00Laura Dern grew up in the Hollywood spotlight, so it's no surprise she followed in her parents'

00:04footsteps. The daughter of Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern, Laura started her career at a young age

00:09after spending her childhood at television studios and on movie sets with her actor parents.

00:14Laura logged a few uncredited film roles before she was 10 years old,

00:18but she became a steadily working actor in her teens with parts in the 1980s movies Foxes,

00:23Mask, and a starring role in Smooth Talk. The dark 1985 coming-of-age

00:27movie based on Joyce Carol Oates' short story Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?

00:31By 1986, Dern's lead role in David Lynch's Blue Velvet made her a star,

00:36and she ushered in the 1990s with three other big flicks, Lynch's Wild at Heart,

00:40Jurassic Park, and Rambling Rose, the latter of which scored her an Academy Award nomination

00:45for Best Actress in a Leading Role. So, with all of that early success, why is it that Laura Dern's

00:50career hit a major lull just as she turned 30 years old? On April 30, 1997, Laura Dern was a

00:56guest star in one of the most famous TV episodes of all time, the coming-out episode of Ellen

01:01DeGeneres, ABC sitcom Ellen. The puppy episode featured Dern playing a lesbian named Susan,

01:07who helped DeGeneres' character discover that she was also gay, and say it out loud for the first time.

01:12Susan, I'm gay.

01:15According to Entertainment Tonight, the episode made television history as the first time a lead

01:20character came out as gay. But it also caused Dern to be blacklisted for her participation in the

01:24episode, and led some people to assume that she was gay in real life. Dern later told Vulture that

01:29while she, quote, didn't think twice about accepting the role, she soon began receiving

01:33calls from people advising her not to go through with it. Though she considered being part of the

01:37episode, quote, an incredible honor, the actress recalled that many people were, quote,

01:41really worried about the potential consequences. In the aftermath of the episode, she lost acting

01:46jobs and even had to hire a security team. Dern also noted that during the shoot,

01:51which included Oprah Winfrey playing DeGeneres' therapist, the cast had to evacuate the set

01:56due to a bomb threat. As Dern told Vulture,

01:58We only did it for, what, 10 days? We all spent the next couple of years really struggling in

02:03work and safety. It was radical to experience that. It was the only time I ever experienced

02:08having to have full security detail. Dern was unable to book acting roles for a year

02:13after appearing in the historic Ellen episode, according to Entertainment Tonight. But once she was back,

02:17she was bigger than ever. By 1999, she was back on the big screen with October Sky,

02:22and a few years later she reprised her Jurassic Park role for the third film in the series,

02:27Jurassic Park 3. In addition to reviving her big screen career, she logged steady roles on television,

02:32including the Twin Peaks revival at Showtime and HBO's Big Little Lies, which won her both Emmy

02:37and Golden Globe awards. As Dern told the Sydney Morning Herald amid a fresh period of success,

02:43"...careers are long and complicated. There definitely were periods of time where I either

02:47wasn't working or wasn't getting offered things that I wanted to do."

02:50Despite the tremendous impact the Puppy episode had on the careers of everyone involved, Laura Dern,

02:55Ellen DeGeneres, and Oprah Winfrey didn't actually speak about it together until a 2017 joint

03:00appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Of course, Dern's career — and DeGeneres and Winfrey's — completely

03:06recovered, culminating in an Oscar win in 2020 for her role in Marriage Story. Following her win,

03:11Dern headed backstage to answer questions from the press. When asked about what can be done to

03:16make Hollywood films more diverse, Dern implored everyone watching to use their voice.

03:21"...we have power to say something, and when we don't see our culture reflected around us,

03:27we get to say something."

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