Entourage’s Adrien Grenier on Feminism, the Wisdom of Whales, and School Buses Filled With Straws

Jezebel shared some fantastic quotes from Entourage‘s Adrian Grenier interview/evening with The Cut‘s Anna Silman, and upon reading the full article, it turns out that those select moments were only the tip of the Grenier iceberg. Like, I know Grenier isn’t the dude in Bushwick sitting next to me at my neighborhood pho place, but Grenier is the dude in Bushwick sitting next to me at my neighborhood pho place.

The article, titled “Adrian Grenier Lives Every Day Like He’s at Burning Man” (pretty self-explanatory) includes such gems such as:

• “’We consume 500 million straws each day. The equivalent of 127 school buses filled with straws. It’s disgusting,’  Adrian Grenier declares the minute I sit down, brandishing a plastic straw that the waiter had forgotten to remove. ‘There should be children in those school buses, going to school, to learn, not straws.’”
• “‘I pioneered Williamsburg,’ says Grenier. ‘It got so gentrified that I had to come to Bushwick.'”
• Silman describing him like so: “[He] talks with the unfiltered confidence of a man who is used to people listening to what he has to say. He is a fan of hugs, and back-touching, and scooping food onto your plate even if you indicate that you’re full.”
• On Lonely Whale’s exhibit at Refinery29’s 29 Rooms (Grenier co-founded the Lonely Whale Foundation): “Whales are the keeper of wisdom.”

What really caught our eye though, was the Entourage star’s stance on feminism:

“I would consider myself a feminist,” says Grenier when I ask him. “But women don’t need my permission to take what is rightfully theirs after all these years, so I don’t even need to declare my feminism as a righteous thing. I just am, because I recognize that it’s happening, it’s right. And I’m just in awe of it and excited about the prospect. Maybe our saving grace is if we can balance the male energy, which tends to be short-term thinking, overly aggressive, often indelicate, with the feminine energy, which is more careful study and frankly more sophisticated, we might actually be able to build a world that would be in balance.”

Grenier’s stance is a bit muddled, but what I think the first half of he’s saying acknowledges  that his male feminism is not radical (a.k.a. he doesn’t need brownie points), and that he’s excited to see women progress. Yay! His comments about balance are a bit more confusing, though, since I’m sure many of us with lady-brains can be pretty indelicate. He also promised the Canadian interviewer that he’ll vote for Hillary Clinton on her behalf.

While some of his assertions, like the fact that he pioneered Williamsburg, are doubtful and easy to poke fun at, unquestionable is Grenier’s love for marine wildlife and general niceness. He comes across so whole-hearted, if a bit misguided at times. The passionate enthusiasm of Grenier, equipped with paper straws and Burning Man worldliness, is so bizarre and sincere that you really should read it for yourself.

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