Zoe Kazan gets emotional discussing her grandfather Elia Kazan's tarnished Hollywood Blacklist legacy while promoting HBO's The Plot Against America

Los Angeles Times

The actress appeared to be holding back tears at the TV press tour in addressing the decision by her grandfather, the acclaimed director On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire, to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities and name the names of his film and theater community pears who had been involved with the Communist party. “I have not wanted to weigh in on my family’s political history partially because of the other people it involves in my family have prized their privacy over a public life,” Zoe Kazan said. “So I’m not going to go into it. But I will say I have thought a lot about how the history of our country affected my family’s history, what it meant for my grandfather as an immigrant to this country to have his Americanness tested, and the choice that he made from that, and I (have) thought a lot about my own choices that I’ve made, the way that I choose to live my own life. I think ‘thou mayest’ choose a different life.”