Sony Hack: Aaron Sorkin Defends Amy Pascal

Aaron Sorkin and others in Hollywood have begun to come forward to voice support for Amy Pascal, the embattled co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, who been subjected to a series of embarrassing revelations as a result of the Nov. 24 cyber-attack on the Culver City studio.

Sorkin wrote The Social Network, which Sony released in 2010 and also Jobs, the upcoming film about the Apple co-founder, which was at the center of heated email exchanges between Pascal and producer Scott Rudin.

In the wake of the disclosures, in which Pascal and Rudin traded racially insensitive emails about President Barack Obama, Sorkin told The Hollywood Reporter, “Amy knows more than a lot of people what it’s like to battle stereotypes. She’s a woman at a large corporation who worked her way from assistant to the chairman’s office. No one in the world feels worse than she does right now, and the thing about Amy’s character is that it’s not because she was caught, it’s because she did it. Amy would rather cut off her own hand than intentionally hurt someone.”

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Sources say George Clooney and CAA partner Bryan Lourd have privately expressed their support for Pascal.

Read more Sony Hack: Why Two Execs With the Same Title — But Not Gender — Are Nearly $1M Apart in Pay

Seth Rogen, whose new film The Interview also is at the center of the developing story, also gave props to Pascal at the movie’s Los Angeles premiere on Dec. 11, saying to the audience before the film screened, “I’d like to thank Amy Pascal for having the balls to make this movie.”

Chris Miller, who co-directed with Phil Lord Sony hits like 21 Jump Street and its sequel as well as the animated Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, tweeted, “FWIW, @philiplord & I love working with Amy Pascal. She has been a great collaborator, supporter, & each time has made us better filmmakers.” Lord added in a separate tweet, “The Sony hack is terrorism. Publishing the information aids terrorists. Sony execs are victims, and filmmakers. We should stand with them.”

And in a guest column for THR, Divergent producer Douglas Wick wrote on Dec. 11: “It’s not about something Amy Pascal, one of the best-liked and longest-serving executives in Hollywood, may have said among her last million or so words. Sure, it’s embarrassing, and we all dish more than we should. … But let’s not forget, what is really happening is one of the most vicious and vindictive acts of cyberbullying since the advent of the Internet.”

Producer-director Judd Apatow commented, “I think this situation is much scarier than just Sony. We should all be concerned when people steal and release private documents and health records to hurt people and every web site does not hesitate to publish this stolen material. In the future this will happen to people in other industries and people will take it much more seriously.” 

Rian Johnson, who directed several episodes of Breaking Bad for the studio’s TV division, tweeted, “This Sony hack is some vile shit. My policy: don’t click & note who’s posting stolen emails it so I can continue to not click in the future.”

Read more Sony Hack: Legal Department Under Microscope After Latest Leak