‘Weinstein told me: Let’s hope it works out for your boyfriend’
THE actress Alice Evans believes Harvey Weinstein might have tried to scupper the burgeoning Hollywood career of her husband, Liar star Ioan Gruffudd, after she rejected his advances.
Evans writes in The Daily Telegraph today of her encounter with Weinstein in 2002.
Gruffudd, 44, had auditioned for Weinstein in New York the previous day. At a hotel bar the film producer propositioned her, asking her to go to the hotel bathroom with him and saying: “Just go.”
When she refused his advances, she recalled: “Harvey utters a phrase that has stayed with me forever. ‘Let’s hope it all works out for your boyfriend,’ he says.”
Gruffudd did not get the role, and neither he nor Evans ever worked with Weinstein again – indeed, she said the producer pretended not to know her at an industry party later the same evening.
Gruffudd’s Hollywood career never took off, but his star has been on the rise in Britain since, taking the role of serial rapist Andrew Earlham in ITV’S Liar.
Gruffudd joked yesterday that he was “the most hated man in Britain” for the role in the drama, which has attracted six million viewers.
It was claimed yesterday that Weinstein had a contract drawn up in 2015, in which the board of the film company he founded with his brother Bob, The Weinstein Company, could not terminate his employment if he paid off women to silence them – as long as he paid out the money himself, and paid a fine to the company.
The fine to the company was on a sliding scale, the gossip website TMZ reported – $250,000 (£188,000) for the
first payout, $500,000 for the second, $750,000 for the third, and $1million for each additional instance.
TMZ’S disclosure raises questions as to whether Weinstein – who was fired by the board on Sunday – could sue the company. A source connected to the company told TMZ that the company had a right to fire Weinstein if he failed to notify the board of any settlements that were reached – but as there had not been any payouts since 2015, the clause was irrelevant.
The Weinstein Company did not respond to The Daily Telegraph’s request for comment, and Weinstein’s representative, Sallie Hofmeister, said the 65-year-old had no comment.
Evans’s accusations of harassment were followed by fresh accusations from the US. Sarah Ann Masse, an actress, told Variety that she was interviewed by Weinstein in 2008 at his Connecticut home when he was looking for a babysitter. Masse said Weinstein conducted the interview in his underwear, and asked if she would consider flirting with his film friends to help advance her acting career, and she said no.
An assistant later called to say she had not got the babysitting job because she was an actress. “It felt like I dodged a bullet,” she said.
Claire Forlani, the British actress who starred in Meet Joe Black and is married to fellow actor Dougray Scott, told yesterday how she had “ducked and dived” five times to avoid “getting slobbered over”. She said Weinstein had also suggested she give him a massage.
Forlani said she was approached by Ronan Farrow, son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, whose exposé in The New Yorker led to the avalanche of accusations, but was encouraged by men around her not to speak up – a decision she now regrets.
Myleene Klass, the British singer, said that she, too, had been propositioned by Weinstein. She said that over lunch at Cannes film festival he “asked me to sign some kind of sex contract with him”.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, will meet today to decide whether to expel Weinstein – an act which would be unprecedented.