Amazon Studios head Roy Price quits after sexual harassment claims
Amazon Studios says it has accepted the resignation of its top executive, Roy Price, following sexual harassment allegations made by a producer on the Amazon series Man in the High Castle.
Price was put on leave last week and had not been expected to return. An Amazon spokesman confirmed the resignation Tuesday and had no additional comment.
The accusations against Price came in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that is roiling Hollywood. The producer Isa Hackett charged in an account published in the Hollywood Reporter that Price had repeatedly and crudely propositioned her following a 2015 event in San Diego.
The company’s head of video content had also been accused of ignoring Rose McGowan’s claims that Weinstein raped her.
On Tuesday, a representative for Price confirmed that he had decided to step down.
His move comes days after Amazon’s senior vice-president of business development, Jeff Blackburn, sent a memo to employees saying that the company did not tolerate harassment or abuse.
The statement, seen by the Press Association, read: “The news coming out of Hollywood over the past week has been shocking and disturbing – and unfortunately we are a part of it. It’s sad and very disappointing to me.
“Amazon does not tolerate harassment or abuse of our employees or our business partners.”
Hackett alleged in the Hollywood Reporter that Price repeatedly propositioned her on the way to, and during, an Amazon party at Comic-Con in San Diego in 2015.
Hackett told the magazine she had made clear to Price she was not interested and told him that she was a lesbian with a wife and children.
Earlier on, McGowan – one of the first women to accuse Weinstein of sexual harassment – had written “HW raped me” in a series of tweets to the Amazon chief executive and founder Jeff Bezos.
She posted: “I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over amp; over I said it. He said it hadn’t been proven. I said I was the proof.”
Weinstein has “unequivocally denied” any allegations of nonconsensual sex.