UPDATED: 6:35am – Fault in our Stars actor Shailene Woodley was arrested for taking part in a protest. She spent the next three months battling PTSD. Now, she has opened up about her ordeal.
In October 2016, Shailene Woodley was arrested for taking part in a protest against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. She streamed the arrest live on Facebook. Now, she has opened up about her ordeal.
Speaking to Marie Clair UK, the Divergent and Big Little Lies star said, “I was strip-searched. Like get naked, turn over, spread your butt cheeks, bend over.”
“They were looking for drugs in my a**,” she said.
“When you’re in a jail cell and they shut that door, you realize no one can save you,” she continued. “If there’s a fire and they decide not to open the door, you’ll die. You are a caged animal.”
Woodley said she suffered from PTSD after the arrest and turned her phone off for three months. “There was so much trauma,” she said. “Mine was like, ‘What do I do now?’ Kind of like a little bit of depression.”
The actor is currently shooting for Adrift, in which she’ll star opposite Sam Claflin. In a recent interview with the New York Times, she didn’t rule out joining politics in the future. “There was a point last year when I was working for Bernie Sanders where I thought, ‘Huh, maybe I’ll run for Congress in a couple years,’” she said. “And you know what? I’m not going to rule it out. Who knows? Life is big, and I’m young.”
The Dakota Access Pipeline was controversial because of its environmental implications. A number of Native American tribes protested the project, fearing for the quality of water in the area, and the destruction of burial sites.
-HT
