McGowan will target ‘rapists, molesters’
Actress takes her aggressive stance on sexual harassment to reality TV
PASADENA, Calif. – Actress Rose McGowan’s rape accusation against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has launched a new brand of activism. And this month she’ll gain a TV platform for her movement against sexual harassment and misconduct.
McGowan, 44, best known for her role in TV’s Charmed, will star in Citi
zen Rose, an E! documentary series that begins with a two-hour special Jan. 30 (8 ET/PT). Rose will return with four more hour-long episodes this spring.
Her aggressive stance is deliberate: “I scare because I care,” she told the Television Critics Association on Tuesday, quoting a line from Disney’s
Monsters Inc. “My father said I was born with my fists up.”
But she says she’s not aiming to be a poster woman for the movement. “My platform is quite separate from #MeToo,” she said. And “it’s not important for me to be seen as anything; I’m happy to live a private existence.” But with the show, which will be aired globally, “I’m just trying to stop international rapists and child molesters, it’s as simple as that.”
The series, for which she began filming footage on her own three years ago, is “pretty much all-access,” and a trailer screened for TV critics shows her speaking out, volunteering and advocating,
well before the allegations surfaced.
“I was waiting for someone to come along (with public accusations), but no one did,” she said. And she said she never signed a non-disclosure agreement when she settled with Weinstein, as has been widely reported, but “I have to sell my house right now to pay legal bills to fight the monster.”
She sold the show to E! before The New York Times and The New Yorker published their investigations in October.
“As all of this was happening this fall, we were already filming” new footage, said executive producer Jonathan Murray, suggesting it won’t be confused with Keeping Up With the Kardashians. “It’s not what you would expect to see on E!”
McGowan reached a settlement with Weinstein in 1997, and when the Times reported it as part of a larger investiga- tion, McGowan became a vocal leader of a movement to shame predators and claim solidarity among victims. Her online #RoseArmy of women seeks revenge, justice and a reckoning for abusers.
“For 20 years, I have clawed, I have scraped,” she said.
What does she hope to accomplish with the new series? “This is not a show about women, this is a show about expanding consciousness ... and doing everything we can do to change minds. I want to be like Gertrude Stein and have a conversation with the world, and not just in my living room.” And her “ultimate goal” is to influence legislation to improve protections for women.
But she brushed aside a question about working for a network accused of gender pay inequality by Catt Sadler, who quit E! in protest, a complaint echoed by stars on the Golden Globes red carpet. (NBC executive Frances Berwick disputes the account, saying “our employees’ salaries are based on their roles and expertise, regardless of gender.”)
“I’m comfortable working there,” McGowan said.