Selma Blair: ‘James Toback threatened me’
Selma Blair has accused filmmaker James Toback of threatening to kill her to keep the actress silent about his alleged sexual misconduct against her.
The Hellboy star came forward with accusations against the writer and director in October, alleging she met Toback in his hotel room almost two decades ago and insisted on rubbing himself against her while forcing the actress to look him in the eyes.
“He said, ‘It’s OK, I can come in my pants,” she told Vanity Fair. “I have to rub up against your leg. You have to pinch my nipples. And you have to look into my eyes’. I thought, ‘Well, if I can get out of here without being raped...’
“He walked me back to the bed. He sat me down. He got on his knees. And he continued to press so hard against my leg. He was greasy and I had to look into those big brown eyes. I tried to look away, but he would hold my face. So I was forced to look into his eyes. And I felt disgust and shame, and like nobody would ever think of me as being clean again after being this close to the devil. His energy was so sinister.”
Blair reveals she wanted to come forward earlier, but was afraid because Toback allegedly threatened her.
“This was weighing on me, I literally had been afraid for 17 years of James Toback, who threatened to murder me, put cement shoes on, and gauge my eyes out with a big pen, if I ever told anybody,” she told U.S. chat show The Talk on Monday.
“I did at the time tell one person and I was mortally afraid for a really long time.”
However, Selma found a source of strength in the exposes detailing disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct, which were published in October.
“I said, ‘I wonder if this has happened to other people,’ ” she continued. “I kind of shoved it back and I started looking on Twitter and the hashtag James Toback and there were a couple inklings and I was like, ‘Oh wait,’ and I got in touch with these women and we got in touch with director Scott Derrickson ... who supported us and said, ‘This is a great thing for women if you can kind of share the story.’
“So I did, but I wouldn’t go on the record. I was still afraid and then I went to Krista Smith at Vanity Fair after James Toback called these women (derogatory terms) and said that this never existed. All 38 women who had come forward... I said, ‘If I can be a bigger voice, I will.’ My prayer when I spoke to Krista Smith was that there will be much bigger women than me that will be taken much more seriously... and it really is happening...”
Over 350 women, including Rachel McAdams and Julianne Moore, have come forward with sordid tales of purported encounters with the writer/director following the initial publication of a Los Angeles Times expose in October, shortly after Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment and assaults were detailed in New York Times and New Yorker articles.
Toback has denied the allegations, but a number of women have subsequently filed police complaints against the Oscarnominated Bugsy writer, and earlier this month, Los Angeles County district attorney’s office spokesman Greg Risling confirmed that authorities are weighing charges in two cases submitted by Los Angeles investigators, and a further three by cops in Beverly Hills.