DEVIL IN DETAILS
How shock rocker Manson terrorized Evan Rachel Wood
In February 2021, nearly 15 years after meeting him at a party in Los Angeles when she was 18 and he was 37, Emmy-nominated “Westworld” actress Evan Rachel Wood publicly accused her former fiancé Brian Warner — otherwise known as the controversial goth rocker Marilyn Manson — of abusing her.
But as the now-34-year-old Wood claims in the first half of “Phoenix Rising” — a two-part feature documentary that premiered Sunday night at the Sundance Film Festival — Manson didn’t try to hide his vile behavior toward her.
In fact, she says he assaulted her on the set of his 2007 music video for “Heart-Shaped Glasses,” which has nearly 30 million views on YouTube.
The then real-life couple were supposed to act out a hot-andheavy moment.
“We had discussed a simulated sex scene,” Wood says in the documentary. “But once the cameras were rolling, he started penetrating me for real. I had never agreed to that . . . I could tell that the crew was very uncomfortable and nobody knew what to do. I was coerced into a commercial sex act under false pretenses. That’s when the first crime was committed against me — and I was essentially raped on camera.”
“Phoenix Rising,” directed by the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Amy Berg, documents Wood’s activism in creating the 2019 Phoenix Act, a bill that extended the statute of limitations for domestic violence from three years to five in California, as well as the months she spent in 2020 deciding to go public with her allegations against Manson.
Vulnerable teen
Wood explains how after the “Heart-Shaped Glasses” shoot, Manson allegedly forced her to lie to the press about the experience. She told GQ the video was “romantic.”
In a statement to The Post, Manson’s attorney Howard King called Wood’s version of these events an “imaginative retelling . . . The simulated sex scene took several hours to shoot with multiple takes using different angles and several long breaks between camera setups. Brian did not have sex with Evan on that set, and she knows the truth.”
But Wood says the physical and psychological abuse didn’t stop there.
During their relationship — which ended in 2011 — Wood says Manson berated her for being Jewish.
“At one point, over the side of the bed where I slept, he wrote ‘Kill all the Jews’ on our bedroom wall,” she alleges in the doc.
Wood says she first met Manson when he approached her at a Chateau Marmont party and told her he was a fan of her performance in the 2003 film “Thirteen.” Still a teenager at the time, Wood now says she grew up in an unhappy home, had “no core identity” and was a closeted bisexual who felt lost.
Wood revered Manson as an artist, and his interest “definitely boosted my ego and confidence,” she says.
They became friends but Wood says that Manson quickly pressured her into a sexual relationship, despite the fact that she was just 18, had a boyfriend and he was still married to Dita Von Teese.
“This guy can have whoever he wants and he’s chosen you,” she says of Manson’s power. “I let things go farther than I wish I had.”
She says he started “love bombing” her — expressing an overabundance of affection and attention as a form of emotional manipulation.
A controlling interest
And then he wanted to take control of her body.
“Scarification and branding was part of it,” says Wood. “He carved an E [into his skin] and I carved an M . . . as a way to show ownership and loyalty. And I carved it right next to my [groin] to show him that I belonged to him.”
A statement from Manson’s team is included at the end of the film, saying, “Mr. Warner vehemently denies any and all claims of sexual assault or abuse of anyone.”
Wood’s 2021 statement in which she claimed she was “horrifically abused” by Manson came as a bombshell — and led to a swift downfall for Manson,
who has since been accused of abuse by some 15 other women, including “Game of Thrones” actress Esmé Bianco. He is now being investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department, though no charges have been filed.
At the time, sources told The Post that Manson’s violent stage persona accurately reflected who he was behind the scenes.
In Manson’s 1999 autobiography “The Long Hard Road Out of Hell,” which he co-wrote with Neil Strauss, he confesses to throwing a bottle of perfume at his mother’s face, which permanently scarred her, when he suspected her of cheating on his father.
“In altercations that followed, I hit her, spit on her and tried to choke her,” he wrote. “I never felt sorry for her.”
In the documentary, Wood says of a younger Manson, “I don’t know what happened, but something really snapped and, from what I can tell, he really hates women.”