‘I began to regret speaking out about Harvey’
As Weinstein is sentenced to 23 years in jail, actress Alice Evans reveals her relief – and the toll that sharing her story took on her family
I’m driving back from school drop-off on Tuesday through bright and sunny Los Angeles when I am jolted by the words “Harvey Weinstein”. I do what I always do when I hear that name on the radio or television: mute it.
But then I remember what day it is, and my heartbeat quickens. I pull over, turn off the ignition and turn the volume all the way up.
“Producer Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 23 years in prison in New York for rape and sexual assault.” Twenty-three years. Twenty-three years! That’s the entire life of River Phoenix. Or James Dean. My fear had been three, or six. I keep staring ahead, watching the traffic.
Two-and-a-half years have passed since the first article appeared detailing the victims’ experiences at the hands of Harvey Weinstein. Now we have won. They – the six brave women who had their lives torn apart in a New York courtroom – have won. No one else will suffer at the hands of this man, and those who already have suffered can begin to heal. But me? I’m not sure what I feel. Relief. Happy for these women, most of whom I’ve come to know and love. But jubilant? Not entirely.
You see, I had started to regret my decision to speak out. Actually, “decision” isn’t even the right word. That makes it sound too careful, too fraught with thought. It happened in a second. I was in bed one night at home, jet-lagged, and suddenly it was all over social media. Ten or 12 actresses – well-known ones – were coming clean about Harvey. Everywhere I looked were tweets from people in the film business, saying “this is true, it happened to me, too”.
There was something exhilarating yet terrifying about it, reminding me of the day the Berlin Wall came down. A feeling that those people might only chip away at the surface and then be pushed back. Or more and more of us could pile in and together we could push hard enough to bring it down completely.
Then I started to notice the doubtful comments. Mostly from people outside the industry, for whom all this seemed too orchestrated. “Why now?”; “How convenient!”; “Funny how so many of these women need a career boost!”
Never before had it seemed so urgent and necessary to let the world know these women were telling the truth. I personally know four women who have confided privately that they were raped by Harvey and have never wanted the humiliation that would surely come with going public.
My own experience with him underscored the exact pattern they have spoken of, and even though it was far from actual rape, I felt I could understand enough of their trauma to both speak out and keep my cool.
I said no to Harvey in 2003, when he approached me at a hotel bar and asked me to follow him to the bathroom: “Just go. I’m right behind you. I want to touch your tits. Kiss you a little,” he said.
Sinister, yes. But not illegal. He propositioned me, then turned nasty when I refused. My boyfriend Ioan (Gruffudd, now my husband) had auditioned for him that week. He didn’t get the part and neither of us was ever considered for a Weinstein film again. I can’t know whether that was down to my rejecting his sexual advances. But his behaviour shocked me deeply and affected me for years. So, on that October 2017 day when Twitter blew up with Metoo, I could no longer stay silent. I went online and wrote: “The whole of Hollywood knows about
Harvey and hardly anybody is speaking up.” Within an hour, I had three offers from the UK to talk or write about my experience. I accepted. I told my agents, who expressed worry but respected my decision. I told my husband, who was in Australia working and begged me not to do it. He was scared: he had heard rumours about Harvey having people followed. He pointed out that we had no other way of generating income. If we were blacklisted, how would we support ourselves and our two children?
To be honest, I barely heard him. Because of the women. Because of what would happen to them if we let this gush of honesty trickle back down to hearsay. It was then, or never.
The first few days were easy. People I ran into said “well done” and “you’re doing the right thing”, but their faces said something else completely – and it didn’t feel right. Why? Fear, mostly.
In a bizarre twist of fate, Ioan was gearing up for a new British TV series, called Liar, which was all about rape.
A he said/she said story. His interviews became more about Weinstein than the role. He started panicking, as one actor after another said the wrong thing and was dragged over the coals.
Then, a list of actresses who were being actively followed, at Harvey’s request, was published. People claiming to be “journalists” called us, fishing for information.
We began to meet up – six or 10 of us – different groups of the 111 women who’d first spoken out about Harvey. Why were we doing this again?
Much of the negativity involved the theory that we were only after publicity. I had to laugh. There are so many ways to get noticed that don’t involve calling out Hollywood’s most powerful man as a predator. If the sanctity of my family’s private life were so much less important than my own renown, why didn’t I simply walk down Melrose Avenue with no clothes on? Sure, I would probably be arrested, but it would be easier.
Other questions were darker. They upset my husband more than me. “Why didn’t she go to the police?” Well, he asked to see her p----, can you imagine? “She could have told a higher authority in the business.” Who? There were plenty of people protecting and enabling Harvey.
“Did this really harm her career, or is she just a terrible actor?” Which made me laugh, since there isn’t an actor in the world who doesn’t secretly think they’re terrible.
I had done a lot of work, after my babies were born, on my own self-esteem. Yes, the professional hits were still disappointing, but they wouldn’t drag me down. My husband was another story. He began to find red carpets nerve-racking. He panicked for days after interviews. He worried that this topic would never, ever go away for us.
Worse, not only had my face started to come up beside Harvey’s on Google searches – but Ioan’s had, too. Even my daughters and friends noticed it. Was this going to be our legacy? Had I sentenced the rest of my family to a lifetime digitally handcuffed to a man who had committed horrible crimes? What if he got off, rehabilitated his reputation and left us looking like sad and bitter losers?
That didn’t happen, thanks to the bravery of Mimi Haley, Jessica Mann, Annabella Sciorra, Tarale Wulff, Lauren Young and Dawn Dunning: I’m listing the names of those women who testified because I want them to be remembered over him. Thanks to all the women who shouted loudly and spoke in great detail about of acts of degradation done to them which made the rest of us feel sick.
One by one, they came out. One by one, we helped each other. Until the number was so great and the stories so similar that the wall began to topple and even the most cynical misogynists had to agree there must be something to it. The jury did, too.
To my family: I am sorry. But it was worth it.
My husband began to panic about the red carpet, and for days after interviews