Men taken down by #MeToo are making comeback
A year after the movement’s rise, some accused of sexual misconduct work their way back into the spotlight.
On Sunday night, Louis C.K. gave his first stand-up performance in nearly 10 months, since he acknowledged sexual misconduct against five female comedians. Comedy Cellar club owner Noam Dworman told The New York Times that his set consisted of “typical Louis C.K. stuff ” and that it “sounded like he was trying to work out some new material, almost like any time of the last 10 years he would come in at the beginning of a new act.” ❚ And five months after CBS anchor Charlie Rose was fired in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations by multiple women, reports surfaced in New York that he had a plan for a redemption vehicle: a new interview show in which he would talk to other powerful men like himself brought down by #MeToo allegations.
It never happened. But the report in The New York Post that Rose, 76,
thought he (or someone) could make it happen illustrates the current, mixed-up landscape as we approach the #MeToo movement’s one-year anniversary, sparked by a pair of exposes from The New York Times and The New Yorker in October 2017 detailing decades of alleged abuse by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Since then, more than 100 men in entertainment and media have been accused of misconduct on a scale that begins with sophomoric behavior and progresses through harassment and reprisal all the way to coercion and rape. Scores of accusers – most of them women, but not all – have come forward to share their stories of abuse and their anger over what they say happened to them, sometimes decades in the past.
The conventional wisdom holds that, once a man is accused, it’s all over; there’s no comeback.
And while Weinstein, Rose and several high-profile men such as “Today” anchor Matt Lauer, Oscarwinning actor Kevin Spacey, former U.S. senator Al Franken and Louis C.K. have lost their jobs, careers and reputations, to date only Weinstein has been charged with a crime. No matter what happens to him in a New York criminal courtroom, he will never work in Hollywood again.
The jury is still out on some of the accused. Will Oscar-winner Morgan Freeman, accused by multiple women of sexual harassment that he strongly denied, help promote his new Disney film, “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” opening in November? Will “Black-ish” star and Emmy nominee Anthony Anderson, under investigation in Los Angeles County for alleged sexual assault that he “unequivocally disputes,” show up for the Emmys next month?
Also up in the air is the long-term
Some high-profile men have lost their jobs, careers and reputations. But the jury is still out on some of the accused.
effect, if any, from the revelation that Italian actress Asia Argento – a leading #MeToo voice as an early accuser of Weinstein – is herself accused of having sex with an underage boy in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2013, and that late last year she quietly agreed to pay him
$380,000 in hush money. Weinstein immediately seized on the news to attack Argento for a “stunning level of hypocrisy” that calls into question the vetting of all the accusations against him, even though Argento’s accusations are not at issue in the New York criminal case.
Meanwhile, a surprising number of other accused figures are on the comeback trail – or never really left in the first place. They’ve taken different approaches to dealing with their PR crises, but they refuse to slink off in shame:
❚ The contrite: Casey Affleck Some decided to apologize and go away for a spell, hoping that acknowledging their behavior and regrets would be enough to receive forgiveness.
Oscar-winning actor Casey Affleck,
43,accused of sexual harassment while directing 2010’s “I’m Still Here,” paid off his accusers nearly a decade ago. But in the wake of #MeToo, he was pressured to bow out of presenting the best-actress Oscar this year.
Now he’s back, promoting his new movie “The Old Man & The Gun” and apologizing publicly for his “unprofessional” behavior a decade ago. The public conversation about #MeToo this year had helped him move from defensiveness to “a more mature point of view, trying to find my own culpability,” he told The Associated Press in an interview published Aug. 9.
Hollywood appears to have accepted Affleck’s contrition and moved on: He’s got another movie coming out this year, at least two more in the works, as well as an HBO miniseries about Lewis & Clark.
❚ The pushback: Tavis Smiley, Russell Simmons, George Takei
A handful of accused men pushed back from the moment they were accused, strongly denying they did anything wrong. Music mogul Russell Simmons, PBS host Tavis Smiley, “Star Trek” icon George Takei, “Rocky” star Sylvester Stallone and Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush fall in this category.
In December 2017, Smiley, 53, loudly declared his innocence and attacked PBS after his talk show was dropped following allegations of inappropriate relationships with subordinates.
Less than a month later he announced plans for a new talk show touting inspirational stories.
In November 2017, when a former model, Scott Brunton, claimed he had been drugged and groped by Takei, 81, the beloved “Star Trek” actor and socialmedia star declared himself “shocked and bewildered” by the allegations.
Six months later, Brunton walked back his story, saying he doesn’t actually recall key moments that he originally claimed had happened and acknowledged inconsistencies in his story.
Takei declared himself exonerated and offered his forgiveness: “I do not bear Mr. Brunton any ill will, and I wish him peace,” he said in a tweet.
❚ The ‘I’ve been cleared’ group: Jef- frey Tambor, Scott Baio, Chris Hardwick
Some of those accused declared themselves innocent because police or prosecutors declined to act on the accusations against them, or internal company investigations cleared them. British actor Ed Westwick, ex-“Happy Days” star Scott Baio, entertainment host/mogul Ryan Seacrest, “Talking Dead” host Chris Hardwick, journalist Ryan Lizza and “Transparent” star Jeffrey Tambor fall in this category.
Tambor, 74, who won two Emmys for playing a transgender woman on Amazon’s “Transparent,” was fired from the show in February 2018 after Amazon conducted an internal investigation of sexual misconduct accusations against him by two trans women.
Tambor repeatedly denied the accusations and expressed bitter disappointment with Amazon and the “Transparent” leadership. And three months later, he was back in the spotlight on a promotional tour for Season 5 of Netflix’s “Arrested Development.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Tambor admitted he’s learned from losing the role of Maura in “Transparent.”
Baio, 57, was accused of sexual harassment and underage sex with former castmates from his 1980s sitcom “Charles in Charge,” but in June, the Los Angeles district attorney declined to press charges citing the expired statute of limitations.
Two months later, Baio called a news conference to crow that he passed polygraph tests that showed he was telling the truth when he denied accusations. (So-called “lie-detector” tests are not admissible in criminal courts.)
Chris Hardwick, 46, the host of the popular “Talking Dead” talk show on AMC, strongly denied allegations in June from his ex-girlfriend, actress Chloe Dykstra, that he sexually and emotionally abused her, but the cable network suspended the show for five weeks while it assessed the allegations. He was dropped from San Diego ComicCon panels and also scrubbed from the Nerdist site he founded.
But now the network has cleared him and he made a tearful return on Sunday. (Nerdist also put him back on the website as one of its founders.)
❚ Defended by their peers: Ryan Seacrest, James Franco, James Gunn
Some of the accused were publicly defended by colleagues. When Seacrest was accused by an ex-stylist of sexual harassment, an internal E! Network investigation cleared him and Kelly Ripa, his co-host on “Live With Kelly and Ryan,” declared on the show that it was a “privilege” to work with him.
Seacrest, 43, kept his place on their show, as host of the E! network’s Oscars red carpet coverage, as host of his syndicated radio show and as host of “American Idol” on ABC.
After James Franco, 40, was accused of sexual misconduct by five women, he was digitally scrubbed at the last minute from the prestigious cover of Vanity Fair’s 2018 Hollywood Portfolio issue. But he also was defended by his sisterin-law, Alison Brie, and by a former costar, Sharon Stone, who said she was appalled by the accusations.
HBO, after its own internal investigation, also is standing by Franco with its series “The Deuce,” which returns Sept.
9 at 9 EDT.
❚ The “low-impact” group: Dustin Hoffman, Aziz Ansari, Michael Douglas
A-list stars such as Ben Affleck (brother to Casey), Michael Douglas, Dustin Hoffman and Richard Dreyfuss (all Oscar winners) seem to have weathered their moments as #MeToo targets, at least so far.
Why? Maybe it’s due to their age, appealing public personalities or longstanding box-office draw.
Others may have benefited from assumptions that the allegations against them were unfair.
Comedian Aziz Ansari, 35, kept a low profile after the website babe.net published an essay in January by a woman who had been on a date with Ansari and said she felt pressured into sex.
Although Ansari apologized and said he “took her words to heart,” there was some public debate about whether a “bad date” experience precisely fits in the #MeToo menu of shame.
In May, Ansari returned to performing his stand-up shows as a surprise guest at the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan. “I feel the general consensus is that he was treated unfairly,” owner Noam Dworman said. In July, Netflix executives told reporters the streaming service wants to make a third season of his “Master of None” series as soon as Ansari is ready.