Geoffrey Rush would ‘look at me and lick his lips’: Norvill
GEOFFREY RUSH TOUCHED his co-star and humiliated her with sexual innuendo during a production of King Lear, the co-star told an Australian court on Tuesday, as News Corp defended publishing some details of her claims.
In Australia’s first defamation case of the #Metoo era, Rush is suing News Corp’s Australian arm over a series of articles saying he was the subject of a complaint to the Sydney Theatre Company regarding the 2015 Lear production.
Under the headline “KING LEER,” and in later articles, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper said last year that the actor, in the title role, had been accused by a co-star of unspecified inappropriate conduct.
The articles did not name the accuser nor detail the conduct, but the female actor, Eryn Jean Norvill, who played Lear’s daughter Cordelia, was called to give evidence by News Corp which stands by the stories. Rush, 67, has denied any improper conduct.
But Norvill, her voice at times breaking with emotion, said Rush constantly behaved inappropriately toward her and other women in the play, as she gave evidence at the Federal Court in Sydney.
“He would look at me and smile and lick his lips, raise his eyebrows, bulge out his eyes, sometimes he’d, like, growl,” Norvill said.
In one rehearsal, when she was playing dead in a climactic scene, Norvill said she opened her eyes to discover Rush simulating groping.
“It didn’t feel like an accident,” she said, adding that his behaviour made her feel humiliated, belittled and put her on “high alert” around Rush whom she had previously idolised. She did not confront him at the time, she said, because she “was at the bottom of the rung in terms of hierarchy and Geoffrey was definitely at the top and that was in play”.
Rush has previously told the court that the Telegraph’s stories implied he was a major pervert, or guilty of major depravity, and did not fit his recollection of the production. A spokeswoman at Shanahan, Rush’s management firm in Sydney, declined to comment.