Rose McGowan has revealed that, just days before the New York Times broke their story on his years of sexual misconduct, a representative for Harvey Weinstein contacted her with an offer of a million dollars in exchange for her silence on him.
Allegedly, McGowan reached a $100,000 settlement with Weinstein in the late 1990s, following an “incident” in a hotel room. She recently learned, though, that this agreement did not contain a necessary confidentiality clause that would prevent her from speaking out.
Weinstein’s lawyers were clearly aware of this too, which might be why, in late September of this year, someone close to the movie mogul contacted Rose McGowan’s lawyer with an offer of further money in exchange for singing a new non-disclosure agreement.
McGowan, now a multimedia artist, told the Times that she made a wild counter-offer just to toy with Weinstein’s lawyers, but would have felt “gross” for accepting it. She said:
“I had all these people I’m paying telling me to take it so that I could fund my art … I figured I could probably have gotten him up to three [million], but I was like – ew, gross, you’re disgusting, I don’t want your money, that would make me feel disgusting.”
Within a day of the story breaking, McGowan had instructed her lawyer to pull her offer, and in the weeks since, she has been vocal on social media about Weinstein’s actions and the culture of silence surrounding sexual assault and harassment.
This weekend, she opened up about her experience with Weinstein in 1997. Then aged 23, she said that she was attending the Sundance film festival and was asked to meet with the producer in a restaurant at 10am, but that the location of the meeting changed to his hotel suite.
She said that on her arrival at his room, two male assistants were present but refused to look her in the eye; she then said that she had a brief business meeting with Weinstein, but at its conclusion, he alerted her to a hot tub in the room.
She declined to comment further on what took place that day, saying “that’s my story to tell”, but says that in the weeks and months that followed, she was extremely upset, but was advised against making a complaint or filing criminal charges, and eventually felt her only option was a settlement.
You can read her full account in the New York Times.
