Jennifer Lawrence is fessing up about what some people say was her dress-code protest at the Cannes Film Festival.
The Hunger Games star, praised for wearing flip-flops in defiance of festival rules for women to wear high heels, told Entertainment Tonight she had no intention of protesting and just wanted to address a wardrobe malfunction.
“I was not making a political statement, not that I wouldn’t,” she told ET on Thursday. “I had no idea until it like, came out that there was a whole controversy with people wearing flats, or like, walking down the red carpet barefoot. I had no clue.”
“My shoes were a size too big,” she continued.
Lawrence said she was unaware that Julia Roberts walked the red carpet barefoot in 2016 to defy the unspoken rules. Nor did she know that Kristen Stewart ditched her Christian Louboutins in 2018, or that Cate Blanchett would leave her stilettos at home hours after Lawrence walked the red carpet in flip-flops.
Lawrence was attending a screening of Bread and Roses, a documentary about women under Taliban rule that she produced, when her flip-flops made headlines. Unfamiliar with the heels protest, she said she only wanted to take a photo — and didn’t want a repeat of past stumbles.
“I forgot to take a picture with my production team, Excellent Cadaver,” she said. “So, we had to take an Excellent Cadaver picture, and I knew I would eat shit if I went down in the shoes that were a size too big.”
“I put on the flip-flops,” she continued. “And then everybody’s like, ‘What a statement! Wow!’”
Lawrence famously fell at the 2013 Oscars while accepting her statue — and did it again the following year. She’s currently promoting No Hard Feelings, a raunchy sex comedy in which her character is hired by two worried parents to “date” their inexperienced son.
Even with flip-flops, Lawrence stunned in a cherry red Christian Dior couture gown at Cannes.
The star said she’s “all for making a statement,” but would prefer to do it “on purpose.”