Harvey Weinstein: Brit Marling latest to make claims against mogul
- Published
Actress and writer Brit Marling has described an encounter with Harvey Weinstein in which she claims the movie mogul suggested they shower together.
The co-creator of paranormal Netflix drama The OA is the latest to accuse the producer of sexual harassment.
Weinstein has "unequivocally denied" any allegations of non-consensual sex.
Many details of the 2014 incident she recounts, in an essay for The Atlantic, external, are similar to those alleged by other women.
She tweeted that she wanted the article, about gender politics and the issue of consent, to "give myself and others solace, strength and context".
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Massage, champagne, strawberries
Marling, who also starred in and produced The OA, a television series first aired last year, wrote in the piece that she agreed to meet Weinstein and went to the hotel "thinking that perhaps my entire life was about to change for the better".
She said she, like others have claimed, was asked to meet him in a bar before a female assistant said the meeting had been moved to his suite.
Marling said her guard went up but she was reassured by the presence of another woman - then feeling "terror in the pit of my stomach" when she was left alone with him.
"I, too, was asked if I wanted a massage, champagne, strawberries," she wrote. "I, too, sat in that chair paralyzed by mounting fear when he suggested we shower together. What could I do? How not to offend this man, this gatekeeper, who could anoint or destroy me?
"It was clear that there was only one direction he wanted this encounter to go in, and that was sex or some version of an erotic exchange. I was able to gather myself together - a bundle of firing nerves, hands trembling, voice lost in my throat - and leave the room.
"I later sat in my hotel room alone and wept. I wept because I had gone up the elevator when I knew better. I wept because I had let him touch my shoulders. I wept because at other times in my life, under other circumstances, I had not been able to leave."
Allegations against Weinstein are subject to criminal investigations in three cities
She praised all of the "courageous" women who have come forward to speak out against Weinstein in recent weeks.
Marling said she believes it was the writer in her who left the room, adding: "The writer knew that even if this very powerful man never gave her a job in any of his films, even if he blacklisted her from other films, she could make her own work on her own terms and thus keep a roof over her head."
On the issue of consent, she said Weinstein could give actresses a career and fame, "which is one of few ways for women to gain some semblance of power and voice inside a patriarchal world".
She added: "Weinstein could also ensure that these women would never work again if they humiliated him. That's not just artistic or emotional exile—that's also economic exile."
Marling, who has co-written, co-produced and starred in films Another Earth and Sound of My Voice, wrote: "Consent is a function of power. You have to have a modicum of power to give it."
Allegations against 65-year-old Weinstein are subject to criminal investigations in London, Los Angeles and New York. He is also under civil rights investigation in New York state.
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- Published24 October 2017
- Published23 October 2017
