Women say Weinstein excused lewd acts as norm of showbiz

NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein callously preceded an alleged rape with reassurances that he’d had a vasectomy, one accuser testified Wednesday.

Another accuser said the once-revered Hollywood producer tried trading movie roles for sex, claiming the lewd offer was the kind of thing that happened all the time in the film business.

Choking back tears, Tarale Wulff told jurors there was no stopping the much larger Weinstein as he grabbed her by the arm, pushed her onto a bed and raped her at his New York City apartment in 2005, during what was supposed to be an audition.

Wulff, now 43 and a model, said she froze, thinking that would make it “easier to get through, to get past it.”

Dawn Dunning testified that the year before, Weinstein put his hand up her skirt and fondled her during a meeting in his hotel suite about her fledgling acting career.

At another meeting, Dunning said, he offered to put her in three movies, but only if she had sex with him and his assistant.

“When he said that, I kind of laughed, I thought he was kidding, and he had kind of a crass sense of humor,” Dunning testified. “But when I started laughing, he got really angry and started screaming at me. He said, ‘You’ll never make it in this business, this is how this industry works.’ ”

Dunning, now 40, said Weinstein went on to name-drop actresses Salma Hayek and Charlize Theron, implying they had done similar things to achieve success — something both women have strongly denied.

Hayek has said she had to fight off Weinstein’s constant harassment and bullying. Theron was upset when some accusers said he implied they had slept together.

Wulff and Dunning’s experiences with Weinstein are not part of the underlying criminal charges against him, but their testimony could be a factor in whether he goes to prison at the end of his landmark #MeToo-era trial.

Prosecutors called them as witnesses under a state law that allows testimony about so-called prior bad acts, enabling them to explore things like motive, opportunity, intent and a common scheme or plan.

Weinstein, 67, is charged with forcibly performing oral sex on Mimi Haleyi, at the time a Project Runway production assistant, in 2006 and raping another aspiring actress in 2013. That woman could testify later this week.

Weinstein has insisted any sexual encounters were consensual.

Weinstein, who was subdued in his interactions with reporters during the trial’s first week, seemed looser as he left the courthouse, proclaiming “It went great today. The lawyers killed it.” He likened a portion of Dunning’s testimony to bull excrement.