Two women got zip-tied outside the United Nations this week, and one of them just won an Emmy a few months ago. That’s the part everybody’s stuck on, and honestly? Fair enough.

So What Actually Happened

Hannah Einbinder and Susan Sarandon were among a group of protesters detained by police outside the UN in New York while Benjamin Netanyahu was inside delivering a speech to the General Assembly. Cops moved in, cuffed people, and hauled them off. Standard protest stuff, if we’re being honest, except for the part where one of the people getting hauled off just picked up an Emmy for playing Ava on “Hacks.”

Sarandon, of course, has been doing this for decades. This isn’t new territory for her. She’s been arrested at protests going back to, what, the 90s? She’s practically got a reserved parking spot in the “celebrity activist who gets detained” hall of fame at this point. Einbinder though – that’s the more interesting story here, at least to me. She’s newer to this level of fame, and she’s leaning straight into using it for something loud and political instead of just… staying quiet and cashing checks. Which, look, plenty of actors do the safe thing. She didn’t.

Why the UN, Why Now

Netanyahu speaking at the UN General Assembly is basically a magnet for this kind of demonstration every single time it happens. Doesn’t matter the year. There’s always a crowd outside with signs, and there’s usually a heavy police presence to match. This time it just happened to include a couple of famous faces, and that’s what turned a fairly routine protest into a headline.

Does Celebrity Involvement Actually Change Anything?

Here’s the thing people love to argue about whenever a celebrity gets arrested at a protest: does it even matter? Like, does Susan Sarandon getting zip-tied outside the UN move a single needle on Middle East policy? Probably not directly, no. But that’s kind of missing the point.

What it does is get eyeballs on the story that wouldn’t otherwise be there. A protest with 200 activists and no famous names might get a paragraph in a local paper. A protest where an Emmy winner gets detained? That’s international news within the hour. That’s just how attention works now, whether we like it or not.

“If you have a platform and you don’t use it, what’s the point of having it,” a fellow protester reportedly said near the scene, capturing pretty much the entire logic behind why celebrities keep showing up to these things.

The Backlash Is Already Here (Obviously)

You already know what’s coming in the replies and comment sections. “Stick to acting.” “Nobody cares what celebrities think.” “Performative activism.” I’ve seen this exact cycle play out so many times I could probably write the script for it myself at this point. Someone famous protests something, gets arrested, and within an hour there’s a whole second news cycle just about whether they should have done it at all.

And look, I get the skepticism, I really do. Not every celebrity protest is genuine. Some of it absolutely is optics, timed for a movie promo or a career reset. But lumping Sarandon into that bucket feels lazy. This is a woman who’s been arrested for causes going back to the Reagan administration. She’s not doing this because her publicist thought it’d play well this quarter. Einbinder, for her part, has been pretty consistent and vocal about this specific issue for a while now too, not just showing up for a single photo op.

That said, not gonna lie, I do think there’s a fair conversation to have about whether celebrity arrests overshadow the actual activists who’ve been doing this work for years with zero cameras pointed at them. That tension is real. It’s not entirely clear how you thread that needle, but it’s worth sitting with.

What This Actually Means

At the end of the day – okay, I said I wouldn’t use that phrase, but it fits here – this is going to be a one or two day story. The detentions will get processed, probably no charges stick beyond something minor, and both women will go back to their regular lives within the week. That’s usually how these things go.

But the bigger pattern isn’t going anywhere. Netanyahu speaks at the UN, protesters show up, and increasingly, famous people are willing to put their bodies and their reputations on the line for it, cuffs and all. Whether that changes actual policy is a different question entirely, and I’m not gonna pretend I know the answer. What I do know is this: the next time Netanyahu steps up to that podium, there’s gonna be another crowd outside. And there’s a decent chance a familiar face or two ends up in the back of a police van again.