She turned down Weinstein’s hush money and found a voice
Actress Mcgowan speaking with authority on industry sexism
In late September, just as multiple women were days away from going on the record with reports of sexual misconduct by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, one of his accusers, Rose Mcgowan, considered an offer that suggested just how desperate he had become.
Mcgowan, who was working on a memoir called “Brave,” had spoken privately over the years about a 1997 hotel room encounter with Weinstein and hinted at it publicly. Through her lawyer, she said, someone close to Weinstein offered her hush money: $1 million, in exchange for signing a nondisclosure agreement.
In 1997, Mcgowan had reached a $100,000 settlement with Weinstein, but that agreement, she learned this summer, had never included a confidentiality clause.
Mcgowan, who was most widely known for her role as a witch on the WB show “Charmed,” had recently developed a massive following as a fiery feminist on Twitter, but she was now, at 44, a multimedia artist, no longer acting, her funds depleted by health care costs for her father, who died eight years ago.
“I had all these people I’m paying telling me to take it so that I could fund my art,” Mcgowan said in an interview.
She responded by asking for $6 million, part counteroffer, part slow torture of her former tormentor, she said. “I figured I could probably have gotten him up to three,” she said. “But I was like — ew, gross, you’re disgusting, I don’t want your money, that would make me feel disgusting.”
She said she told her lawyer to pull the offer within a day of The New York Times publishing an article that detailed decades of Weinstein’s alleged sexu-