Harvey's full-frontal 'menace' of Salma
He was a “monster.” Salma Hayek came forward with new allegations against Harvey Weinstein on Wednesday in a harrowing essay detailing the sexual harassment — and violent threats — she endured to get her passion project “Frida” made.
“The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, ‘I will kill you, don’t think I can’t,’ ” the actress wrote in a powerful op-ed for The New York Times.
Hayek, 51, thought her dreams were coming true when Weinstein “said yes” to working with her on the biopic of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo at Miramax.
“Little did I know it would become my turn to say no,” she wrote. “No to me taking a shower with him. No to letting him watch me take a shower. No to letting him give me a massage. No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage. No to letting him give me oral sex. No to my getting naked with another woman.”
Weinstein became enraged when she rebuffed him, she said. “When he was finally convinced that I was not going to earn the movie the way he had expected, he told me he had offered my role and my script with my years of research to another actress.”
She threatened legal action — and he came back with a list of “impossible tasks,” telling her to get a rewrite of the script, another $10 million and an A-list director, the actress wrote.
Hayek delivered and filming went forward, but the nightmare was far from over, she said.
“The sexual harassment stopped but the rage escalated,” she said. “We paid the price for standing up to him nearly every day of shooting.”
At one point, Weinstein threatened to shut down the film because there wasn’t enough “sex appeal” and even questioned her having Kahlo’s limp and famous unibrow, she said.
“He offered me one option to continue. He would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman,” Hayek wrote. “And he demanded full-frontal nudity. He had been constantly asking for more skin, for more sex.” She felt she had no choice but to acquiesce.
“By now so many years of my life had gone into this film,” she wrote. “We were about five weeks into shooting, and I had convinced so many talented people to participate. How could I let their magnificent work go to waste?”
Hayek had a “nervous breakdown” the day they shot the “senseless” sex scene and took a tranquilizer just to get through filming. “It was not because I would be naked with another
woman,” she said. “It was because I would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein.”
Ultimately, the film ended up winning two Oscars — and Hayek was nominated for her performance — but Weinstein never offered her another role.
“Years later, when I ran into him at an event, he pulled me aside and told me he had stopped smoking and he had had a heart attack,” she said. “He said he’d fallen in love and married Georgina Chapman and that he was a changed man. Finally, he said to me: ‘You did well with ‘Frida’; we did a beautiful movie.’ ”
A flood of sexual-misconduct allegations have hit Weinstein — with some accusing him of assault and rape. He has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex.
Hayak, who has one child with French billionaire husband François-Henri Pinault, said she didn’t initially come forward because she had brainwashed herself “into thinking that it was over and that I had survived.”
“In reality, I was trying to save myself the challenge of explaining several things to my loved ones,” she said. “Why, for so many years, we have been cordial to a man who hurt me so deeply.”
The actress said she’s “grateful” that victims’ stories are finally being heard.
“I hope that adding my voice to the chorus of those who are finally speaking out will shed light on why it is so difficult, and why so many of us have waited so long,” Hayek wrote.
“Men sexually harassed because they could. Women are talking today because, in this new era, we finally can.”