TORONTO – Lily James’ new drama “Swiped” is a modern-day cautionary tale about the Internet, male toxicity and how badly women are treated and disrespected in the tech space.
And when you think about the fact that it’s set in the early 2010s, when social media was pretty much Disneyland compared to today’s divisive environment, it’s sort of depressing.
James, however, has some faith. In the true-life drama “Swiped” (streaming Sept. 19 on Hulu), she stars as Whitney Wolfe Herd, the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire and the creator of the women-forward dating app Bumble. The movie chronicles how she also co-founded the dating app Tinder, but was attacked on the inside by tech bros and filed a sexual harassment suit against the company in 2014. She went on to build Bumble from the ground up, yet still ran into issues being in a male-dominated field.
“It’s really quite striking when you realize this is pre-#MeToo, so women weren’t being listened to. Their sides of the story weren’t being taken into account,” James says in an interview before the premiere of “Swiped” at Toronto Film Festival. “Also, there was like no protection or safety. We have improved, but there’s so much further to go.
“The problem with the internet is there’s so much anonymity,” adds the British actress, 36. “There’s no accountability for what you write or say. That’s really frightening because people can be really cruel and that’s dangerous. And it has such a huge impact on people who are receiving these negative messages online.”
“Swiped,” which James also produced, taps into the toxicity of social media by showing “hurtful and hateful tweets, and actually like death threats on tweets,” she says. “There’s a report button that didn’t do anything. We are all still, I think, on a journey and how do we protect people on the internet, which can feel like the wild, wild west?”
James, who has a verified Instagram account, acknowledges that she struggles with social media on the whole. “I’m just this sort of generation where all through my teens I didn’t have it, which feels like this blissful kind of life. So I do really think about what it must be like for kids to grow up with that being their norm. I really long for a time, it feels like a kind of simpler time, where you’re not always putting your life out on social media and therefore risking any sort of response. But you can’t. Tech’s just powering forward and it’s like the speed of light.”
But James is optimistic that we’re not too far down the rabbit hole to fix things. “I believe in kindness and unity and community and a longing for connection and intimacy that goes far beyond your phone,” she says.
There are women entrepreneurs making the Internet better. She shouts out Herd for her efforts, which include championing a 2019 Texas law that makes it illegal to send unsolicited nude photos, and also is a fan of Emma Grede, founder of Good American and host of the “Aspire” podcast.
“I get really excited when I hear these women who have power and who have really dominated having a voice,” James says. “That gives me great faith that hopefully we can do things differently and make some changes to how things are right now.”