McGowan is fighting a ‘monster’
Producer of Citizen Rose says actress approached team before Weinstein report
PASADENA, CALIF.— Andrea Metz, the executive producer of activist and actress Rose McGowan’s upcoming E! documentary series about sexual harassment, is no stranger to the power of reality TV in confronting social issues.
She produced I Am Cait, which depicted Caitlyn Jenner’s gender transition, and before that, Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
But this time, it’s different, and personal.
“Being able to be a part of something that I believe is a historical movement and as a woman — that’s incredible,” Metz said in an interview. “I’m a #metoo and a lot of women on my staff are. And I didn’t know that when we hired them. And we sat there and watched, this cathartic change and healing started with people on my crew. It’s a really life-changing project.”
The star of the show, McGowan, 44, was, before her recent rise to political prominence, perhaps best known for her role in the TV series Charmed. Citizen Rose will be broadcast on E! beginning with a two-hour special this month, returning with four more episodes this spring.
“My father said I was born with my fists up,” a combative McGowan said to television critics. “I’m really just trying to stop international rapists and child molesters. It’s pretty simple. After that, I’m golden.”
The panel was easily the most electric of the week. Before McGowan appeared on stage, she had a video introduction asking critics to be “respectful” and not refer to Harvey Weinstein by name. Producer Metz says the film executive’s name is not mentioned at all during production. “We just call him H.W. or the monster,” she told the Star.
McGowan has accused Weinstein of rape, charges which he has denied. In 2016, McGowan said she was raped by a “studio head”; the New York Times has reported that Weinstein paid a financial settlement of $100,000 (U.S.) to her in 1997 regarding an incident in a hotel room at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
She told critics on Tuesday she never signed a nondisclosure agreement as was reported and that she is selling her house to fund her fight.
“I have to sell my house right now to pay legal bills to fight this monster,” McGowan says. “I love it when people are, like, ‘You’re so lucky you have a platform.’ I’m, like, ‘Do you understand what I have been through for 20 years? Do you understand that my sitting here is a miracle?’
“I have fought. I have clawed. I have scraped. And I have done it strategically so I could arrive at this moment. It’s not an accident that I’m sitting here.”
McGowan’s re-emergence into the
“We grasped that we were on the cusp of a watershed moment. I just didn’t know how it was going to go down.”
ANDREA METZ EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
news has included some extra controversy: In October 2017 alone, her Twitter account was briefly suspended, prompting a fierce backlash online, and police in Virginia issued an arrest warrant for drug charges in what McGowan has characterized as an effort to keep her silent. (According to a report in the New Yorker, police said a worker cleaning a plane at Dulles International Airport found McGowan’s wallet, and found in it two small bags of powder later identified as cocaine.) She has pleaded not guilty.
Metz says she started filming in August, not knowing that the Times would release a bombshell report with allegations of abuse against Weinstein in October.
“Rose came to us, she brought us the project, so we were doing a story on her as a person,” Metz says.
“I knew she felt misunderstood and silenced, and I was intrigued by that. On the day the article came out, we were filming at a women’s shelter in East L.A. We grasped that we were on the cusp of a watershed moment. I just didn’t know how it was going to go down. But we felt proud of Rose. We hope she could feel a little bit of vindication.”
McGowan says even before it was shopped as an E! series, she had been filming footage of herself as far back as three years ago, well before the #metoo movement over sexual harassment started.
“I was waiting for someone to come along (with their own accusations) but no one did,” she said, eventually deciding that she would break her silence and give a voice to the issue.
“When I started shooting footage for the show, I realized that I could not speak on camera without a script. I had never been filmed on a camera without a script,” McGowan says.
“I had to train myself to be able to actually just exist as me. And no, this is not pretty, like, all access, and it’s not always pretty, and I have no glam team. It’s raw and it’s true. And it’s my truth.”