Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Takei, Dreyfuss respond to harassment claims
Actors’ accounts differ from those of accusers
NEW YORK — George Takei took to Twitter on Saturday to deny groping a male model and Richard Dreyfuss said he never exposed himself to a female writer helping him with a TV script, both back in the 1980s.
Takei, 80, the “Star Trek” icon, said in a series of tweets that events described by Scott R. Brunton in The Hollywood Reporter “simply did not occur” and he does not remember ever knowing Brunton.
“Right now it is a he said/he said situation, over alleged events nearly 40 years ago. But those that know me understand that non-consensual acts are so antithetical to my values and my practices, the very idea that someone would accuse me of this is quite personally painful,” Takei tweeted.
Dreyfuss, meanwhile, told the New York magazine blog Vulture he flirted and even kissed Los Angeles writer Jessica Teich over several years but thought it was a “consensual seduction ritual.” The fact that “I did not get it,” he said, “makes me reassess every relationship I have ever thought was playful and mutual.”
Teich told Vulture she first met Dreyfuss at a theater where she worked and they spent hours together over several years after she was hired to develop a script for an ABC comedy special. The actor, she said, made continual, overt and lewd comments and invitations but she never told anyone. Dreyfuss, now 70, called Teich a friend of more than 30 years.
In 1987, Teich said, she was summoned to his trailer on the set of one of his films and he exposed his genitals to her. Dreyfuss agent Barry McPherson on Saturday said his client denies ever exposing himself to Teich. As for other encounters with Teich, Dreyfuss said he is now “horrified and bewildered to discover that it wasn’t consensual.”
Teich said she decided to speak out after Dreyfuss tweeted support for his son, Harry, after the younger Dreyfuss went public with accusations that Kevin Spacey groped his crotch when he was 18.
Brunton told The Hollywood Reporter he was 23 when he first met Takei at a bar. Brunton was living in Hollywood and working as a waiter at the time. They exchanged numbers, speaking by telephone from time to time, when he rang up Takei after breaking up with a boyfriend. Takei invited him to dinner and the theater, Brunton said. He said the two went to Takei’s condo for drinks after.
He said he grew dizzy and “must have passed out,” awaking to his pants around his ankles and Takei groping him. He said he extricated himself and left.
The Hollywood Reporter said it spoke to four friends of Brunton who said he had confided in them about Takei years ago.
In another development in a barrage of sexual assault, harassment and rape allegations, Massachusetts prosecutors said they will meet with the son of a former Boston TV anchor who said Spacey sexually assaulted the teenager at a Nantucket restaurant.
Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe told The Boston Globe on Friday the meeting “will occur soon.”
Heather Unruh told reporters Wednesday that Spacey stuck his hand down her then-18-year-old-son’s pants and grabbed his genitals while the two of them were at a restaurant in July 2016. Unruh said Spacey ultimately left to use the bathroom and when he was out of sight, her son ran away.
Spacey’s lawyer didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment Saturday.
In New York, a subpoena in a Weinstein rape investigation requesting all medical treatment records from a therapist for “Boardwalk Empire” actress Paz de La Huerta is too broad and would be embarrassing and damaging to her, her lawyers said in court papers.
De la Huerta told police Oct. 25 the media mogul raped her twice in 2010. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has subpoenaed her therapist, who told Vanity Fair she recalled de la Huerta telling her about the sexual assaults.