4th accuser: ‘Sex’ star Noth sexually assaulted me in ’02
“Sex and the City” actor Chris Noth aggressively groped a woman in 2002 and then threatened to “ruin” her singing career if she went public, the woman said Thursday, leveling the fourth allegation against the television star in recent weeks.
Singer-songwriter Lisa Gentile says that the night of the incident, Noth gave her a ride home from the Midtown Italian restaurant Da Marino. He asked to come up to her apartment, and she reluctantly invited him in, she said.
“He started kissing me almost right away,” Gentile said at a virtual press conference, her voice cracking at times. “He was slobbering all over me, I quickly became uncomfortable. Then he became aggressive and put both hands on my breasts and began squeezing them very hard over my shirt.”
She described Noth, 67, trying to force his hands under her bra during the encounter.
“Then he forced my hands to pull up his shirt exposing his belly, and then even harder, he pushed my hands down toward his penis. I finally managed to push him away and get out of his grasp, and yelled, ‘No. I don’t want this.’ He became extremely angry, and started screaming and calling me a ‘tease’ and a ‘b—ch.’ He stormed out of my apartment,” Gentile said.
Gentile said she kept quiet about the episode for nearly two decades because of Noth’s
status in Hollywood. The actor is well-known for playing Mr. Big in “Sex and the City” and Peter Florrick in “The Good Wife.”
“He warned me that if I ever told a soul about what happened the night before that he would ruin my career— that I would never sing again and that he would blacklist me in the business. He hung up on me, and I immediately called my mother and my father crying. I was afraid to come forward because of Mr. Noth’s power and his threats to ruin my career,” Gentile said, recalling a phone call from Noth the day after the encounter.
She said she’d met the actor in 1998 at Da Marino, where he was a regular customer.
The allegations are strikingly similar to ones leveled last week by a woman who told The Daily Beast she was 18 when she met Noth at the same restaurant. She alleged Noth assaulted her inside the restaurant manager’s office, which was empty.
Noth has strenuously denied that the allegations.
“No always means no — that is a line I did not cross. The encounters were consensual,” Noth has said.
The Daily News could not immediately reach him for comment Thursday.
Gentile and Ava’s accounts follow an article last week in The Hollywood Reporter, which detailed rape allegations against Noth by two women, who contacted the magazine months apart, unknown to one another.
The women who spoke to THR said the much-anticipated “Sex and the City” reboot, “And Just Like That,” prompted them to go public with their allegations.
In 1995, Noth’s ex-girlfriend, model Beverly Johnson, accused him of abuse and was granted a temporary restraining order, the National Enquirer reported at the time.
The actor has been dropped from several projects as the allegations pile up. He was fired from the CBS series, “The Equalizer” and Peloton spiked an ad in which he was scheduled to appear as Mr. Big.
Gentile cannot sue Noth or file a criminal report against him due to New York’s statute of limitations.
Her attorney, Gloria Allred, urged the “Sex and the City” stars — Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis — to lobby Gov. Hochul to pass the Adult Survivors Act. The proposed law would give victims of sexual assaults that occurred outside the statute of limitations an opportunity to make their case in court.