It was, says Suffragette star Helena Bonham Carter, the "perfect" response to her new film when the red-carpet opening was stormed by more than 100 female activists and their colourful smoke bombs in London on Wednesday.
Members of Sisters Uncut, a group campaigning against domestic violence, told reporters they wanted to bring attention to the cuts to domestic violence services. About a dozen women lay down on the carpet to prove their point, and refused to move.
But Bonham Carter, who was on the carpet at the Odeon cinema when the protesters jumped barriers - only to be carried and pushed away by security guards - told Sky News it was a perfect response.
"I'm glad our film has done something," she said. "That's exactly what it's there for."
The women were removed from the red carpet as green and purple smoke bombs filled the air outside the cinema.
Bonham Carter's Suffragette co-stars Romola Garai and Carey Mulligan also gave the protesters their backing.
Here are our flyers from tonight. #deadwomencantvote pic.twitter.com/8DCutvkapr— Sisters Uncut (@SistersUncut)
October 7, 2015
Garai was giving interviews as the carpet was stormed nearby and said: "I haven't spoken to them [the protesters] or seen their demands but I'm happy to see the suffrage movement is alive and happening."
Mulligan said: "Hopefully this film will inspire everyone in the way they view the world. We are an unbalanced society – women and men – and films like this inspire conversations about how we can correct that imbalance."
Suffragette tells the story of early members of the British women's suffrage movement in the late 19th and early century, with Mulligan as Maud Watts, Bonham Carter as Edith Ellyn and Meryl Streep as luminary Emmeline Pankhurst.
London's Mirror reports that during the opening, protesters chanted "Dead women can't vote" and "We are suffragettes". The screening ran well behind time and police and extra barriers were brought in as presenters were forced to raise their voices.
Shouting "it is our duty to fight for our freedom" the women on the carpet tried to hold their ground until they were carried off. A bystander told The Mirror: "A horn rang out four times and about a dozen women jumped over the barrier, laid down on the red carpet and linked arms and started shouting, 'David Cameron take note, dead women can't vote'."
