A shaming week for the cowardly sisterhood
THE chorus of disgust over Harvey Weinstein’s lascivious and predatory behaviour is deafening. Hollywood’s greatest stars, and many of its minor ones, are falling over themselves to denounce the monster who has now been accused of rape by four women.
among the latest to tear into him is Kate Beckinsale who said he tried the old ‘meet me in my hotel room in my dressing gown’ trick with her when she was just 17. She declined his offers of alcohol, she added, saying she had school in the morning. Standing up to Weinstein ‘harmed my career’, she claimed.
isn’t it surprising, then, that Kate went on to make three major movies with Weinstein after the bathrobe incident which took place around 1990 — Serendipity in 2001, The aviator in 2004 and Everybody’s Fine in 2009.
another of Weinstein’s alleged victims was gwyneth Paltrow. She was so mortified after he tried to bed her aged 22 that she agreed to make Emma soon afterwards in 1996, The Pallbearer in the same year, then Sliding Doors in 1998.
in all she made at least nine Weinstein movies, and after her successes with his company, the new York Times crowned her the ‘First lady of Miramax’ (his company).
Supermodel-turned-actress Cara Delevingne claims he demanded a threesome in his hotel suite — yet she took a star part in his movie Tulip Fever. i could fill a telephone directory with the names of Hollywood actresses and wannabes who now claim they were sexually harassed or worse by Weinstein, yet kept quiet about it as they continued to take his shilling and profit from his power.
Bond girl lea Seydoux told this week for the first time how Weinstein tried to jump on her and kiss her — back in 2012, she thinks. Why did it take her so long to speak out?
Even B-listers are at it. Myleene Klass says Weinstein propositioned her, offering her a ‘sex contract’ in 2010. So why is she only naming him now, seven years on?
The great unanswered question in this sordid affair is how could this beast have preyed for so long on so many strong, multi-million- dollar Hollywood actresses without one of them breaking ranks?
Why only now do we have a stampede of stars declaiming the monster that Weinstein surely is?
The ghastly truth may be that it suited them to stay silent. They valued their box office earnings and star status more than their integrity or their duty to other young women.
i would argue that with their silence they colluded in his activities — enabling him to continue to paw and grope and harass and abuse women for decades when they could have shamed him. This sorry saga has not been a good advert for the sisterhood, however much they might scream about Weinstein now.