Marvel star Evangeline Lilly says she attended anti-vaccine protest in DC

Marvel actress Evangeline Lilly on Thursday shared an Instagram post saying that she was in Washington, D.C., last the weekend to “support bodily sovereignty,” at a controversial anti-vaccination protest where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke and compared vaccine requirements to the struggles Anne Frank faced in Nazi Germany.

Lilly wrote in her Instagram post that she believed “nobody should ever be forced to inject their body with anything, against their will” or “under threat,” and then she listed things she believed were being leveraged as threats against people who were refusing to get vaccinated. 

“I was pro choice before COVID and I am still pro choice today,” the “Ant-Man and the Wasp” star wrote at the end of her Instagram caption. 

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020, Lilly also faced backlash for comments that she made about quarantining and restrictions to flatten the curve, according to CNN. 

“Some people value their lives over freedom, some people value freedom over their lives. We all make our choices,” Lilly wrote in a comment after she posted a picture with the caption, “Just dropped my kids off at gymnastics camp. They all washed their hands before going in. They are playing and laughing. #businessasusual.”

Her words caused a backlash by those who questioned why she wasn’t doing her part to slow the spread of the coronavirus, especially as Lilly noted her household included her immunocompromised father, who has stage 4 leukemia. 

Lilly later apologized for her words, posting on Instagram again, and stressed that, “I never meant to hurt you. When I wrote that post 10 days ago, I thought I was infusing calm into the hysteria. I can see now that I was projecting my own fears into an already fearful and traumatic situation.”

Lilly is not the first actress in the Marvel sphere to face backlash over vaccine comments.

In October, “Black Panther” actress Letitia Wright denied allegations that she was sharing anti-vaccine messages on the set of a new movie.