The London Film Festival premiere of Pharrell Williams’s animated documentary Piece by Piece was disrupted by animal rights protesters on Sunday night.
Before the film began, protesters with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) unfurled a banner inside the auditorium at London’s Royal Festival Hall which read, “Pharrell: Stop Supporting Killing Animals for Fashion.”
According to Variety, one demonstrator told the Louis Vuitton menswear creative director, “Shame on you, Pharrell. Animals are skinned alive and tortured.”
The Happy singer, who is battling laryngitis, responded, “God bless you. The change we want to see won’t happen overnight.”
According to a representative for the British Film Institute (BFI), security guards asked the protesters to leave and then escorted them out of the hall.
“We feel it was managed well and any attempt to remove them earlier would have exacerbated the problem,” the rep added.
This isn’t Williams’s first encounter with a PETA campaigner on the Piece by Piece press tour. During its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, one rushed the stage and yelled, “Pharrell’s collection is made from their blood! Pharrell stop torturing animals!”
Addressing the allegations at the time, he insisted to the audience that his team “are actually working on that”.
“Rome wasn’t made in a day. And sometimes, when you have plans to change things and situations, you have to get in a situation of power and of influence where you can change people’s minds and help progression,” he continued.
Piece by Piece, which tells his life story in the form of LEGO, served as the closing night gala of the London Film Festival on Sunday.
