Eight women accuse Morgan Freeman of sexual harassment
MORGAN Freeman was yesterday accused of sexually harassing at least eight women.
The 80- year- old actor was hit with allegations of trying to lift up young women’s skirts or touching their bodies and giving them massages without their permission.
Women who worked for his production company said it was a “toxic environment” and that he asked one former employee: “How do you feel about sexual harassment?”
Speaking of another woman he worked with, Mr Freeman allegedly said: “I’d like to have an hour with her.”
The allegations, in a report by TV news channel CNN, were the result of an investigation that took more than a year to complete and paints a portrait of Mr Freeman as a “creepy uncle”, as former staffers called him.
In a statement last night Mr Freeman said: “Anyone who knows me or has worked with me knows I am not someone who would intentionally offend or knowingly make anyone feel uneasy.
“I apologise to anyone who felt uncomfortable or disrespected – that was never my intent.”
Since the exposure of Harvey Weinstein as a sexual predator last year, dozens of men in Hollywood, the media and business have been outed for alleged misconduct.
But the allegations against Mr Freeman stand out because he is such a beloved star, with a movie career that spans five decades. His best known films include Driving Miss Daisy, Seven and The Shawshank Redemption, while he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Million Dollar Baby in 2005.
As part of their investigation CNN spoke to 16 people, half of whom claimed they were victims of Mr Freeman. The other half said they witnessed his alleged conduct.
A woman who was a senior member of the production staff of the movie Now You See Me in 2012 described Mr Freeman as “sleazy”. She said: “He did comment on our bod- Chloe Melas claims Mr Freeman told her that she was ‘ ripe’ ies. We knew that if he was coming by not to wear any top that would show our breasts, not to wear anything that would show our bottoms.” A young production assistant who worked on bank heist comedy Going In Style in 2015, alleged that she endured several months of harassment by Mr Freeman. She said he would put his hand on, or rub, her lower back whenever he saw her. One time he “kept trying to lift up my skirt and asking if I was wearing underwear” but she moved away, she said. Mr Freeman allegedly carried on trying to grab it until another actor made a comment. Mr Freeman and his business partner Lori McCreary founded Revelations Entertainment in 1996 to encourage more roles for black actors. But it appears to have had no human resources department and women who worked there said they had little recourse against Mr Freeman. A woman employed at Revelations said that Mr Freeman would “come over to my desk to say hi and he’d just stand there and stare at me. He would stare at my breasts”. Others described how one day Mr Freeman went up to a young intern and gave her a massage until she “went visibly red and wriggled out of his grasp”. A female production assistant who worked with Mr Freeman on The Dark Knight said he made inappropriate comments to female crew members on the set. She said: “Morgan did things in a way that an older, more established person can get away with because they have that power.” The investigation by CNN began when its entertainment r e p o r t e r , Chloe Melas, interviewed Mr Freeman. Ms Melas, who was six months pregnant, said that, in a room full of people, Mr Freeman told her she was “ripe”.