‘I just fled’: Ashley Judd talks about Harvey Weinstein encounter

Ashley Judd was tearful but self-assured in her first interview since publicly accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment. She talked to Diane Sawyer, and excerpts from the interview aired during “Good Morning America” Thursday.

“I didn’t expect that I would feel tearful, but it’s been an absolutely, tremendously moving 2-1/2 or three weeks,” Judd told Sawyer. Before the story ran, the actress wasn’t sure anyone would believe her or care. Instead, more than 60 women have come forward with similar claims against Weinstein that paint him as a sexual predator who used business meetings as an excuse to lure women to his hotel room, where he would often disrobe and try to cajole them into massages or force them into sexual acts.

Judd broke the dam on the Weinstein allegations. When the New York Times dropped its shocker of an article on Oct. 5 about the industry titan paying off accusers for decades, her account led the story; she was the highest-profile star at that point to come forward. After her claims — not to mention the even more troubling allegations from other women in the New Yorker story the following week — more A-listers, including Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, emerged with their own accusations against Weinstein.

In that initial Times story, Judd said, “Women have been talking about Harvey amongst ourselves for a long time, and it’s simply beyond time to have the conversation publicly.”

Judd talked to Sawyer about the day that Weinstein allegedly tried to bully her to bend to his will two decades ago. Still fairly new in Hollywood, she went to his hotel, where she believed she would be meeting him on the patio to talk shop. But the concierge said the producer was waiting for her in his room. She hadn’t heard negative rumors about Weinstein at that point, but alarm bells went off. She went upstairs, though, because, “I had a business appointment.”

Once inside the hotel room, Weinstein started pressuring her, she said, first asking to give her a massage, then trying to get her to give him one.

“There’s this constant grooming negotiation going on,” she said. “I fought with this volley of no’s, which he ignored. Who knows? Maybe he heard them as maybe, maybe he heard them as yeses, maybe they turned him on.”

She also claimed that Weinstein steered her into a hallway near a closet, where he tried to get her to help him pick out his suit for the day. Then he suggested they go into the bathroom, just ahead of them, so she could watch him shower.

She finally got out of the room by making a deal, according to her account, saying that she would relent when she won an Oscar in one of his movies.

“And he was like, ‘Yeah, when you get nominated,’ and I said, ‘No, when I win an Oscar,’” she said. “And then I just fled.”

She’s been over that day in her mind many times, wondering if she did the right thing.

“Am I proud of that?” she said. “I’m of two minds — the part that shames myself says, ‘No.’ The part of me that understands the way shame works says, ‘That was absolutely brilliant. Good job, kid. You got out of there. Well done.’”