Wife joins stars against Weinstein
UNITED STATES: A flood of allegations poured in yesterday against Harvey Weinstein in reports that detailed claims of sexual abuse and included testimonies from actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, further intensifying the already explosive collapse of the disgraced movie mogul.
Three women accused Weinstein of raping them in a story published online by
including Italian actress and film-maker Asia Argento and a woman who was an aspiring actress in college when she caught Weinstein’s eye.
A representative for the mogul vehemently denied the allegations in a statement to the magazine.
In a follow-up to its earlier expose, also reported that many other actresses had in recent days added to the chorus of accusations surrounding Weinstein.
Paltrow described Weinstein’s attempt to lure her, then 22, into giving him a massage in a hotel room. The incident prompted her then-boyfriend Brad Pitt to angrily confront Weinstein at a film premiere.
By the end of the day, former US president Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, an array of movie stars and Weinstein’s own wife, Georgina Chapman, had issued statements condemning Weinstein’s alleged conduct.
Chapman said she was leaving her husband after 10 years of marriage, citing Weinstein’s ‘‘unforgivable actions’’.
Lucia Evans, then a senior at Middlebury College, said Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2004 at the offices of his Miramax production company in Tribeca. She had been brought in for a casting meeting with Weinstein.
Argento said Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999. A third woman spoke anonymously.
story claimed that 13 women have said Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them between 1990 and 2015. In the article, actresses Rosanna Arquette and Mira Sorvino are among those who claim Weinstein sexually harassed them.
Arquette described a 1990s incident at a Beverly Hills hotel in which Weinstein tried to make her give him a massage and then attempted to lead her hand to his penis. Afterward ‘‘he made things very difficult for me for years’'.
‘‘I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did,’' Jolie said. Actress Louisette Geiss (
also came forward yesterday, saying that in a 2008 meeting at the Sundance Film Festival, Weinstein appeared nude in an open bathrobe and asked several times that she watch him masturbate.
also reported that 16 former and current executives and assistants at The Weinstein Co and Miramax either witnessed or knew of Weinstein’s unwanted sexual advances. –