Game of Thrones star Lena Headey has detailed a disturbing encounter with Harvey Weinstein earlier in her career.
She first met Weinstein at the 2005 Venice Film Festival, where her film The Brothers Grimm was premiering. Weinstein’s Miramax studio was distributing the film, and during their meeting he succeeded in getting her alone.
“At one point, Harvey asked me to take a walk down to the water, I walked down with him and he stopped and made some suggestive comment, a gesture,” she writes. “I was genuinely shocked, I remember thinking, it’s got to be a joke, I said something like… oh come on mate?! It’d be like kissing my dad! Let’s go get a drink, get back to the others. I was never in any other Miramax film.”
She says the next time she met him, it was years later in L.A., and that she’d “always carried the thought that he’d never try anything with me again, not after I’d laughed and said never in a million years.”
They met for breakfast, a meeting which Headey assumed would be professional. “He asked me a few questions about the state of my love life. I shifted the conversation back to something less personal. Then he went to the loo. He came back and said, let’s go up to the room, I want to give you a script.”
She says that as they walked back to the lift “the energy shifted, my whole body went into high alert.”
She told Weinstein that she wasn’t interesting in anything other than work, and that was the sole reason she got in the lift.
“I don’t know what possessed me to speak out at that moment, only that I had such a strong sense of don’t come near me.
“He was silent after I spoke, furious. We got out of the lift and walked to his room. His hand was on my back, he was marching me forward, not a word, I felt completely powerless. He tried his key card and it didn’t work, then he got really angry.
“He walked me back to the lift, through the hotel to the valet, by grabbing and holding tightly to the back of my arm, he paid for my car and whispered in my ear, ‘Don’t tell anyone about this, not your manager, not your agent’.
“I got into my car and cried.”
Headey joins now more than 40 women who have spoken out about sexual harassment, assault and rape against Weinstein, including Rose McGowan, Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cara Delevingne, Ashley Judd and Asia Argento.
Weinstein has been fired from his own company, and is now under investigation by New York and London police for allegations of sexual assault. He has denied this.
His brother, Bob Weinstein, has now also been accused of sexual harassment, by television showrunner Amanda Segel.
You can read Headey’s full statement below.
— lena headey (@IAMLenaHeadey) October 17, 2017
— lena headey (@IAMLenaHeadey) October 17, 2017
— lena headey (@IAMLenaHeadey) October 17, 2017
— lena headey (@IAMLenaHeadey) October 17, 2017
