In their own chilling words, the actresses who accuse movie mogul of rape
ITALIAN actress Asia Argento alleged she was raped by Harvey Weinstein after she was invited to a Miramax party in France.
She told The New Yorker she was taken to the ‘party’ by one of his producers but was then ushered to a hotel room where Weinstein was waiting for her.
She said she asked, ‘Where is the f***ing party?’ and was told: ‘Oh, we got here too early.’
Miss Argento, who was 21 at the time, said Weinstein praised her acting work, but then left the room and returned wearing a bathrobe, before asking for a massage.
‘He asks me to give a massage,’ she said. ‘I was, like, “Look man, I am no f****** fool”.
‘But looking back, I am a f****** fool. And I am still trying to come to grips with what happened.’
The actress, now 2, said she reluctantly agreed to the massage but that Weinstein then pulled up her skirt and performed a sex act on her, despite her begging him to stop.
She told The New Yorker: ‘It wouldn’t stop. It was a nightmare.
‘I was not willing. I said, “No, no, no”. It’s twisted ... It’s a scary fairy tale.’
Miss Argento said she did not attempt to fight Weinstein and had eventually feigned enjoyment in an attempt to end the sexual assault, which she described as a ‘horrible trauma’. She later blamed herself for not fighting back, and said she felt ‘damaged’ by the episode at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes in the French Riviera in 1997.
The actress recalled sitting on the hotel bed after the attack with her make-up smeared across her face and her clothing ‘in shambles’.
She said she told Weinstein, ‘I am not a whore’ – but that he only laughed and told her that he would put the phrase on a T-shirt.
Weinstein continued to contact Miss Argento and later took her for dinner – even introducing her to his mother.
She starred in the film B. Monkey, released in 1998, which was distributed by his firm Miramax. Miss Argento said that several
months after her alleged rape the pair went on to have consensual sex.
‘ I felt I had to,’ she said. ‘ Because I had the movie coming out and I didn’t want to anger him ... After the rape, he won.’
She told The New Yorker she believed Weinstein would wreck her career if she rejected him, and was still struggling to come to terms with her alleged rape.
Miss Argento said: ‘The thing with being a victim is I felt responsible. Because if I were a strong woman, I would have kicked him in the balls and run away. But I didn’t. And so I felt responsible.’
In 2000, she wrote and directed a film, Scarlet Diva, which included a scene in which a powerful producer corners an actress in a hotel room and tries to assault her.
Miss Argento said other women had recognised Weinstein from the film and had contacted her to describe their own similar experiences.
He had apparently even recognised himself, telling her: ‘Ha, ha, very funny.’
SEX ATTACK TWO
LURED to Weinstein’s hotel room for a meeting, a woman who worked with the mogul said she was raped by him.
The unnamed woman said she had not gone to police as she had been too afraid and had feared the executive would wreck her career.
She told The New Yorker: ‘He drags your name through the mud, and he’ll come after you hard with his legal team.’ The woman said Weinstein had taken her to his hotel room saying he needed to talk about work, but then changed into a bathrobe and ‘forced himself on me sexually’.
She repeatedly said no and had felt ‘horror, disbelief and shame’ after the attack.
Weinstein’s spokesman Sallie Hofmeister said he ‘unequivocally denied’ any allegation of non-consensual sex.
SEX ATTACK THREE
ASPIRING actress Lucia Evans, above, alleged she was raped by Harvey Weinstein during a casting meeting.
Then a university student, she was approached by the producer at a New York nightclub in 2004 and said he began pestering her with late-night phone calls and requests to meet him.
She had heard rumours about him targeting young women and refused, but agreed to a daytime meeting at the Miramax office with a female casting executive.
But she was then led to an office where Weinstein was waiting alone, and claimed he forced her into performing a sex act on him.
He initially suggested she could star in his television show Project Runway if she lost weight, and then told her about two film scripts.
She told The New Yorker: ‘At that point, after that, is when he assaulted me…
‘I said, over and over, “I don’t want to do this, stop, don’t”. I tried to get away, but maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t want to kick him or fight him …
‘He’s a big guy. He overpowered me.’
She went on: ‘I just sort of gave up. That’s the most horrible part of it, and that’s why he’s been able to do this for so long to so many women – people give up, and then they feel like it’s their fault.’
Miss Evans said Weinstein later behaved as if nothing had happened, saying: ‘It was like it was just another day for him. It was no emotion.’
She told The New Yorker she had suffered nightmares, had developed an eating disorder, and her friends had feared she would kill herself.