Selma Blair Reveals Extent of Fallout After Anti-Islam Instagram Comment: “I Didn’t Have a Career at All”

Selma Blair has revealed new details about the career fallout she faced following a controversial Instagram comment she made amid the Israel-Hamas war in February 2024.

The veteran star said she lost her entire career and the team that supported it — talent agency CAA, a manager of 30 years, a lawyer and personal and book publicists — in the wake of leaving a comment widely criticized as anti-Islamic under a video posted by immigration reform advocate Abraham Hamra. Though she apologized, Blair noted it wasn’t enough and not only did she lose that team but also brand deals, payment for a supposed Super Bowl advertisement, her son’s godmother and more. So much that, she says, she came to learn “what erased feels like.”

“The brands I worked with were gone within a day. A few partnerships I’d spent years building were shelved. My agency was gone. My lawyer was gone. My publicist was gone. My book agent was gone. My book publicist was gone. My social media manager was gone. My son’s godmother was gone – my best friend. While some friends in the business quietly stood by me, most of them were gone. And of course, my manager, my supposed friend of 30 years, and a Jew, was gone too. I still don’t know what any of them were thinking. No one returned my calls,” explained Blair from a podium inside New York’s Jewish Museum on Thursday evening during the Anti-Defamation League’s State of the Arts reception.

To back up a bit, that comment, which was deleted once it generated backlash, went like this: “Deport all these terrorist supporting goons. Islam has destroyed Muslim countries and then they come here and destroyed minds. They know they are liars. Twisted justifications. May they meet their fate.”

She later apologized for it with a lengthy statement. “In my comment, I mistakenly and inadvertently conflated Muslims with Radical Islamists and fundamentalists, a terrible err in my words and resulted in hurting countless people I never meant to, and I deeply regret this. As soon as my error was brought to my attention, I deleted the comment,” posted Blair, who by month’s end had parted ways with her team. “Hate and misinformation are amplified so easily these days. This time by my own hands. In this instance, I erred in my writing and I fully recognize how I contributed to the Muslim community being understandably very upset. I respect and love all peace-loving communities, all over the world.”

In her speech Thursday night, she mentioned the controversy, the comment and the apology but kept it brief.

“In February of 2024, just mere months after Oct. 7, I posted a comment online. It offended people, and I did apologize right away. No conditions, no fine print. I meant it then and I mean it now, and I’m leaving the comment there, because the comment was not the story,” she said. “I’m not up here for sympathy. I know I’ve had a lucky life, and I’m working again. And of course we know that life is better now than it was then. I have a team now I’d walk through fire with. It’s small, and it is my team. I want you to know that before I tell you the part that isn’t better. It left a mark.”

That mark, she detailed, was trauma as a result of the backlash which she endured along with her son. “The fear got into me, and fear is contagious in a house,” she said before turning attention to her only child. “He’s a teenager now. He’s supposed to be embarrassed by me, not frightened for me. Careers come back. Years of his childhood do not.”

Blair then nodded to recent online controversies involving Ed Sheeran and Macklemore, and though she didn’t name names, she referenced pro-Palestine activist Javier Bardem and how he shared a petition calling for singer Pink to be removed as a UNICEF ambassador.

“A couple of weeks ago, of course, a movie star used his platform to push a petition against an artist who has spent more than a decade raising money for children. Her crime was objecting, out loud, when another performer railed against Israel from a stage. She didn’t ask for anyone to lose anything. Not a job, not a stage, nothing. She said what she thought,” Blair said. “And for saying what she thought, a movie star spent his week trying to get her canceled. This is what it looks like when we lose our humanity. A woman who raises money for children stops being a person and becomes a target, and the people cheering can’t see her anymore. They only see a side.”

As reported by THR this week, Blair is set to star in a new film, Schmoolie the Deathwatcher, and her team now includes the law firm Berlandi Nussbuam & Reitzas, Oren Segel and Jill Fritzo PR. She revealed from the podium that she’s also at work on another new film called Hineni, a Hebrew word that translates to “Here I am.”

“It’s a documentary about antisemitism, and as confounding and confusing as it seems to be because no one wants to talk about geopolitics but it seems to get intermingled completely, but I wanted to make this for the people who are not in this room,” she detailed. “[The film] goes to Israel, so people can see why that land is not an abstraction to us. And it talks to people who disagree with me, on camera and keeps the disagreement in the cut, because you don’t change a mind by only talking to people who already agree with you.”

No word yet on production partners or how far along she is in filming. But she made the mission of the film clear at the close of her speech. “Antisemitism has to stop. Not be managed. Not be explained. Not be weighed against something else. Stopped. Two years ago the phone stopped. Tonight I’m the one talking, in a room full of my own people, saying the thing out loud. I’m a Jew. I’m still here. Hineni.”

Her full speech can be found here.