The BFI London Film Festival screening of Pharrell Williams’ animated biopic “Piece by Piece” was disrupted by animal rights protesters on Sunday.
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The incident took place during the closing night gala of the London Film Festival at the Royal Festival Hall. Before the screening began, two protesters — representing animal rights activist group PETA — unfurled a banner that read, “Pharrell: Stop Supporting Killing Animals for Fashion.”
“Shame on you, Pharrell. Animals are skinned alive and tortured,” one protester shouted from the balcony of the concert hall. The protesters specifically called out Williams’ work as Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director, chanting: “Stop the torture, stop the pain, LVMH you are to blame.” (LVMH is the French multinational holding company that owns Louis Vuitton.) For at least a minute and a half — before eventually being removed — the protestors also chanted “Animals want to live — just like us” and shouted “Animals are not fabrics, they’re not handbags…Fashion is violence.”
Williams, who is battling laryngitis, responded in a hushed voice: “God bless you. Rome wasn’t built in a day. And the changes that they seek don’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of planning. We are working on those things.”
His voice failing, he added in a whisper: “They wanted to be heard so we heard them.”
Security eventually asked the protesters to leave and then escorted the protesters out of the auditorium, according to a representative for the British Film Institute. “We feel it was managed well and any attempt to remove them earlier would have exacerbated the problem,” the rep told Variety .
In statement shared with Variety , PETA U.K. senior campaigns manager Kate Werner said, “While Pharrell’s life story is told in this navel-gazing film, animals are confined in filth on farms before their heads are bashed in and their skin is ripped off while they’re still conscious – all so pieces of their bodies can be made into Louis Vuitton’s fleeting fashion pieces.”
Werner added, “PETA is calling on Pharrell to use his power for good, stop being complicit in cruelty, and push Louis Vuitton into the 21 st century by refusing to use wild-animal skins and fur.”
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Last month, a PETA protester rushed the stage at the “Piece by Piece” premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“Your Louis Vuitton collection…Pharrell’s collection is made from their blood,” the protester shouted. “Pharrell stop torturing animals! Ostriches are being hung upside down, electrocuted with their necks slit!”
After the protester was removed, Williams addressed her objections directly. “Rome wasn’t made in a day,” he told the audience. “And sometimes, when you have plans to change things and situations, you have to get in a situation of power and of influence where you can change people’s minds and help progression.”
He continued, “That is not necessarily the way to do it, and sitting in my position, when I have conversations on behalf of organizations like that unbeknownst to them, they come out here and do themselves a disservice. But that’s OK, when that change comes, everybody in this room will remember that I told you, we are actually working on that. And if she would’ve just asked me, I would’ve told her. But instead, she wanted to repeat herself.”
Before the interruption at Royal Festival Hall, “Piece by Piece” director Morgan Neville told the 2,000-strong audience about the concept behind the documentary, which is animated like a Lego movie.
“I think Pharrell has said that the Lego gave him a level of distance from his own story that he wouldn’t have to look at himself for 90 minutes, wouldn’t have to necessarily hear himself for 90 minute and that it gave him that room to be comfortable,” Neville explained. “And for me it was the tool to get inside his head, to actually get closer to him because I realized through the animation we could actually see what he sees in his mind’s eye.”
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