There are a lot of horrific details in the New York Times’ latest story about Harvey Weinstein and his “complicity machine.” Many of the pieces have been long rumored, and they’ve been sidelined details in the larger narratives of his victims. Meaning, many of his victims spoke out about how Weinstein threatened them, using his far-reaching web of media contacts. Many of his victims were sent into meetings with Weinstein by their own representatives, their managers and agents. Many of the victims describe Weinstein’s boorish attempts at seduction, saying that he would list the names of all of the famous women who allegedly slept with him willingly to further their careers (like that was something for him to brag about). Again, here’s the link to the NYT story:
How did Harvey Weinstein rack up forty years of sexual abuse allegations? He had a lot of help. Our new investigation, just published: https://t.co/rM2jQiJWjk
— jodikantor (@jodikantor) December 6, 2017
As I said, several of Weinstein’s victims detailed how Weinstein would “name-drop” his famous conquests as a seduction technique. Lea Seydoux said he did that, as did other women. Well, Gwyneth Paltrow was one of the first women to go on the record about how he harassed her and tried to manipulate her into sleeping with him. That incident happened in the mid-1990s. And apparently, Weinstein used to use Gwyneth’s name as some kind of calling card, like she was one of his greatest conquests.
Over 20 years ago, Paltrow allegedly told her agent Rick Kurtzman of C.A.A that Weinstein had made advances on her in a hotel room, but she rejected him. In the new interview, she says when she told Kurtzman what had happened that he “looked incredulous” and expressed disgust, but he did not suggest discussing the episode with the agency’s higher ups. Kurtzman has declined to comment.
But The Times reports, without her knowledge, Weinstein told other women that she did not reject him. Paltrow says now other women have told her that he tried to coerce them into sex acts by bragging that he’d had sex with the Shakespeare in Love actress, and that sleeping with him was “the best thing you can do for your career now.”
Paltrow says that women have come to her in recent weeks to say that Weinstein used her name in several encounters. She said the conversations with the victims have been upsetting. In the interview, Paltrow said, “He’s not the first person to lie about sleeping with someone, but he used the lie as an assault weapon.”
When you really think about it, it’s even more awful than you originally thought. Not only did Harvey Weinstein harass, abuse, assault and rape dozens – if not hundreds – of women over the course of decades, but he then lied about it as a “technique” to manipulate women into sleeping with him. To be assaulted, harassed and demeaned by an authority figure is awful, but then the authority figure lies about it and turns his harassment and abuse into a fictitious consensual relationship AS A WAY TO ABUSE MORE WOMEN. Gwyneth is right: he used the lie as assault weapon. If only Matt Damon had seen it, right there in front of him, right? What’s the over-under on Weinstein bragging about all of his “conquests” to men like Matt Damon and George Clooney?
that lie really stayed with her too. for a long time i thought it was just common knowledge that gwyneth paltrow “slept her way to the oscar” with harvey weinstein. it was kind of regarded as fact on a lot of gossip blogs. it’s sad.
Much like has been done (even after all this came out) to Blake Lively and others. “Harvey’s Girls” is a label we should be ashamed we allowed.
Agree. It’s one of the first self-reflection moments I had when this all came to light. Over the years, a lot of us on this site used the term “Harvey’s Girls” as a phrase to judge and demean several actresses. IMO, that makes us also partially complicit in this mess, because we also knew rumors about him harassing other women, but still believed that there were specific actresses who slept with him. I never believed all the “Harvey’s Girls” stories/rumors (i.e. I never believed the hacked pictures of JLaw were meant for Weinstein) but I never doubted it about other women. So even on the tangential thread in the story – that of public gossip, I feel regret that I played into his lies and propagated the concept of “Harvey’s Girls”.
@miagirl Could not agree more. I think it’s so important that we all self-reflect and learn from this. I feel the same way about some of my former attitudes. I remember (while watching Boardwalk Empire w/hubby) telling him the gossip I’d read about the “train wreck” Paz de la Huerta. In retrospect, I feel like a giant ass (as I should).
@mia girl and lirko: +1000. People being willing to not only acknowledge this, but to decide that they don’t want to be complicit in it anymore? THAT is feminist. Not doubling down on misogynistic statements.
I agree. But what does that mean for celebrity gossip? We’re all commenting on people we don’t know based on brief snippets of interviews, photos–we have no idea what ANY of these people are really like or what they’re going through.
Was the writer at crazy days and nights Harvey?
I heard they figured out it was a lawyer from the LA area, but not an entertainment lawyer. A fair amount of it seems to have been basic fabrications.
Wow, I get stuck in moderation limbo a lot around here, for totally innocuous comments. I wonder if some $cilon flagged some of the things I had to say about the cult. I’ve been pretty outspoken (because I have researched it extensively, and, like whoa).
¯_(ツ)_/¯
That site is just loathsome, and perpetuates myths about many people, that everyone decides must be true. It even says in the small print on the site (or it used to anyway, I haven’t seen it in a long time) that stories maybe true, part true, or totally fabricated, they weren’t even hiding it. They straight up said “Sometimes we make stuff up” in their own words.
I hadn’t heard of those Harvey and her stories until recently – I’d always thought that her family connections helped her get that Oscar and protected her in a way from the darker side of the industry.
I’m not a fan but it took guts to speak out when she did.
I only read stories about Paz on gossip websites and one in particular heaped a lot of scorn on her and her actions. I enjoyed the website host and allowed that to influence the way I thought about Paz. I feel bad about that and have learned something.
Serious Question: Do you (Celebitchies, not just jeanne) know any woman personally who used sex with superiors as her means to gain ground professionally? Because I truly don’t. I know of women who were targeted by superiors and who succumbed (whether through seduction, intimidation or whatever) and perhaps some women parlayed this sensitive information into a bargaining chip after the fact, but how prevalent is this “sleeping their way to the top” scenario? It’s beginning to seem a lot like male fantasy/justification as opposed to a legitimate “concern”. In truth, it strikes me as having a frequency along the same lines as false rape accusations: it happens, but not often enough for it to be considered an epidemic of any sort.
Yes. And also in the entertainment/media industry. The corporate side. LITERALLY was given the advice from the female exec,”In this company, its not who you know, it’s who you blow” and proceeded to tell me background on her “adventures” climbing the corporate ladder. So that rumor exists for a reason.
Wow. I’ve been in the corporate world for more than 20 years and literally have never seen nor heard of it. And I am definitely a “girl’s girl” and someone other women confide in.
I have seen a worker in my field grabbing (and keeping her hand there) the union’s leader butt in a public place. Other latter union leader hugged me good bye , hugging or cheek kissing is a common greeting in my country (he used to be a family friend) , but that particular time it was obviously different. I never ever came back to his office, and have been avoiding him for years, yuck!!
my husband works in a government office and he has seen how a few girls semi-flirt with the boss to advance in their job, of course he knows stories about office affairs, but to particularly advance, that he really knows of first hand is this flirting. There are lots of stories, tho. My brother used to work in a beach resort in the entertainment/sports area and he was offered a career in entertainment in exchange for sex by a then famous music producer in my country. HE laughed it off, and went on to become a PE teacher.
I also saw it happen in my company, and it is more science Industry. So one or maybe two cases of women sleeping to the top in 15 years of science industry work?
About twenty years ago, we bid on a Russian project. The Russian man partially in charge promised our company we would win the contract – for hundreds of millions, if we could give his daughter a job, so the company did. She was not at all qualified – it was a job which required a bachelor of science, and usually a masters in science, and she had a bachelor’s of arts in something completely unrelated. I think she knew about economics, while we were working for a firm doing extensive structural work, like bridges to things, storage of chemicals, things where public safety was at risk. I still have no idea how the company got away with hiring this woman and training her to do our work. JP Morgan was fined for winning Chinese clients by offering their children jobs, whereas my company did that and knowingly employed someone not trained for very technical work.
Also because this woman got a green card, she was able to sponsor her parents to become US residents.
Anyway, this woman slept with our boss, received really good raises, and even got our boss to let her go travel to a construction site (which many other more qualified people would have killed to do, as designing and building are two different things, and experience with the latter leads to a huge pay bump), and she now has a very coveted job – sales – where she is making a lot of money.
I bow to the foresight of this family, as corruption continues because it works. She seemed very blase about it all, like if the boss is dumb enough to sleep with her and fall in love with her, why shouldn’t she take advantage of things for herself?
Yes, I know and have known women who have used sex to advance their career. I have lost lucrative jobs to women who would sleep with people. It ended up working in my favor in the long run because it created a persona of mystery and elusiveness but in truth, I just wasn’t’ up for that scene, and it kept my life separate.
Wives didn’t feel threatened, and that REALLY worked in my favor, and it still pays off.
It is always a mistake. Then it is expected, and other men will start thinking it is a perk when dealing with you and then they might try to pass you to someone else.
@magnoliarose: I’ve lost opportunities because I misinterpreted sexual interest for interest in my project. I’ve lost opportunities for rejecting men. I’ve had to make the choice between “having sex” and getting raped. Also, women who sleep with men to get something? They don’t have contracts. The men get their sex, don’t give anything back, and look at the woman as a fool. There’s no winning. I’m not going the judge other women for facing different shit and making different choices than I did. I’m not going to judge the women who lucked upon the 1% chance of getting something for sex.
The only women I’ve known to sleep with superiors gained favorable treatment but NOT promotions. You get a promotion by playing the game like the competitive men while acting non-threatening.
I’m sure these types of lies made it easy for people to dismiss the rumors as just gossip. At least some were untrue (and some people knew that), all were presented by Weinstein as consensual, and I am sure all of them sounded like gross smut against the actresses. Like every ingenue in town was a skank throwing herself at Weinstein for a chance at an Oscar — how could he resist? And all the ones speaking out against him were just shrews pissed they didn’t have the talent, looks or whatever to actually get the Oscar and were taking it out on Weinstein.
I don’t think it would have been hard to buy into this horrible and prevalent narrative. Even so many gossip sites that now stand against Weinstein gleefully bought into and wrote about the “Harvey girls” exchange of sex for fame, laughing at the women.
I bet Gwyneth is the case that Clooney referenced as HW bragging about sleeping with an actress and it working out for her but dismissing it as something said to downplay the actress’ achievements.
Agreed. I didn’t even begin to suspect that Harvey Weinstein may have been sexually assaulting women until after Rose McGowan discussed being raped and people on sites like this were guessing that the Weinstein brothers may have been involved. Even then, it was just a hunch I had based on what other gossipers were saying. But for a long time, let’s face it: Harvey Weinstein was just one of many rich men (some named, some not) hinted at as a potential “John” when people wanted an outlet for their contempt/disdain for Hollywood’s privileged vagina-havers but lacked the imagination, self-control, or empathy to deal with it in a less archaic and dangerous manner.
So now everyone is going to get righteous but people on this site regurgitated the lie and spoke about Harvey and gwyneth like it actually happens; you’d all state it like it was fact when you wanted slam Gwyneth.
Yup. It’s doubly strange because Paltrow was always very much connected to Hollywood by her family and is not a bad actress either– yet people still pushed the narrative that she had to sleep her way to the top to achieve success smdh.
I never thought she slept her way into roles. I just thought she got cast in her earlier roles through the nepotism machine, but then ended up not being a bad actor. SHE irritates me, but I’ve generally liked her in film (am I the only person who really like “Sliding Doors”?)
I liked Sliding Doors too and I’m not ashamed to admit it 😉
Not all people. Also this is probably why she almost doesn’t act and is devoted to her silly blog and ventures outside Hollywood.
I am sure there are actresses and actors who slept to the top. But with Goop it never made sense. Like with Angie. They grew up in hw. Of course they had doors opened. And the fact that this happened to Gwyneth makes it that much scarier. No one is protected.
I love “Sliding Doors.” Interesting concept, and she’s terrific in it. I never thought she slept with Harvey Weinstein, either; I thought she had some doors opened because of her connections, but actually was talented and that’s why she had staying power. It is scary to think that her connections in Hollywood didn’t shield her from HW’s disgusting predation; it truly can/did happen to anyone, at any time.
@paranormalgirl
@AMA1977
Forget Gwyneth in Sliding Doors! (Although she was lovely in it.) Let’s talk about John Hannah. I can’t be the only one who fell a little bit in love with him in that movie, right?
Another Sliding Doors fan here 👋🏻. Such a charming movie. And I, too, always thought GP benefited from nepotism (and dating Brad Pitt didn’t hurt, either), not from sleeping with HW.
Add me to the Sliding Doors love fest. I think it’s the best film she ever did. And to Galaxias below thread, yes John Hannah absolutely melted my heart in that movie.
Me, too! LOVE Sliding Doors, esp. because of John Hannah! I’ve liked him in everything I’ve seen him in. Don’t particularly care for Goop, but that’s more because of her smug personality rather than talent (or lack thereof).
This. People believe what they want to, especially if it makes who they hate look bad, regardless of facts. Look at the lies that were spread about Gretchen Mol and Weinstein, perpetuated by Lainey.
Completely.
ParanormalGirl: I love Sliding Doors!
Yep.
I love Sliding Doors too!!
Lainey didn’t create that rumor. It was around a long time before she posted it. In reality, you don’t know if Lainey is truthful or Gretchen. It is Hollywood, and it is a lot of smoke and mirrors. Just leave it as it is and blame the machine and no one else. Sticking up for Gretchen to blame Lainey isn’t fair either. The rumor originated contemporaneously and lived on, and there were credible for reasons for some people to believe it. Not out of malice.
Gretchen isn’t a good example.
@magnoliarose–> Kind of disappointed to hear this from you. I believe Gretchen, and I believe that’s just as important when a woman disavows these kinds of rumors as when she comes forward with her story. The fact that people don’t believe disavowals is what allows them to have the energy to destroy careers even when they’re not true. And perpetuating blind items with incredibly sexist, victim-blamer language is a really ugly career choice, even IF women do make incredibly compromised choices between willingly having sex with a guy who will give you a career or risking getting raped by him and having your career tanked for your effort.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed. Same for Blake and Jennifer and a slew of other women. We as women have to stop perpetuating this abuse by supporting these narratives.
Absolutely.
The reality is, there are women that were coerced into sex wth Weinstein that weren’t raped. And yet none of them come forward because they don’t want to be painted with the brush of “she slept with that guy to get ahead”. We still vilify the women for being in a position where they were forced to trade their bodies for career advancement. Realistically, there HAS to be a very long list of women who chose to say “yes” under that immense pressure and yet it’s no wonder why they wouldn’t come forward themselves. That’s what’s killed me about the whole “we thought Harvey was just a dog” – that was STILL sexual harassment. We need to stop blaming the women when men use their power to take advantage of them.
When someone threatens your livelihood there is no such thing as ‘consent.’ If a woman slept with him so she wouldn’t lose her job that is not ‘consent’ jfc
I doubt that Weinstein went around telling the “I though he was a philandering dog sleeping around, not a rapist” crowd, “Hey, I threatened to ruin these women’s careers if they didn’t get on their knees”. It was probably something more along the lines of “Look at all these rich, hot, thirsty, ambitious seductresses who will hop on you for the right price. Women are so attracted to power!”
And for A-list women- who, as female public figures, are all too used to rumors about their sexualty being used against them- it’s probably been all too easy for many of them to dismiss the things they were hearing as the same old, same old.
Um, since when does “coerced” imply that they gave real consent?
And again, that’s my point. EVEN IF THEY SAID YES IT’S STILL WRONG. A boss demanding sex for a job isn’t him being a dog. It doesn’t make the women sluts who will get ahead. And yet that’s how they’re treated now and how people would treat any woman that may choose to come forward. Because they’re not all going to be stories of him literally forcing himself on women. Some of them are simply going to be “I felt like I had to”. We need to treat those women as though Harvey’s actions were wrong, and not like they’re brazen hussies.
@Bridget
I agree. It is not a simple thing. Everyone had their own relationships with him, and none of them are going to tell us the details or maybe even the truth. But that doesn’t matter because any intimate contact with Harvey was an abuse of power and predatory. They don’t owe us the facts or anything. I don’t particularly care because Harvey is the villain.
They don’t owe us details. But as long as we talk about women who were pressured into trading sex for a job as “casting couch” or “F#$%s for tracks” or any number of things that are used to demean women, we’re treating them as though they are whores and not as though a crime has been perpetrated on them. I don’t think they need to come forward, but I think we need to talk about why they’re not.
@Bridget
Agree again.
We can get caught in the weeds but this is system of shame, and we need to address the psychology of it and how to shut down the system. Workplaces should be professional and any person doing their job should be able to advance on merit and not have to engage in the system.
Also, the social implications that our bodies aren’t our own and the scarlet lettering or women when the predator’s character is the one that should be the center of the discussion.
i am glad this comment & narrative is happening.
Great point. But thankfully, they don’t speak for all of us.
I even remember someone saying the one silver lining about the scandal of Harvey’s behavior was the fact that it must be making Gwenyth squirm, because they assumed that she serviced him. That sort of cattiness is just another example of someone’s hatred of a celebrity going a little too far.
And people are still saying it about Jennifer Lawrence when they want to slam her. Even after all of this news broke.
The Hollywood gossip industry has always framed “casting couch” stories as ambitious women willing to sleep with powerful men to get ahead. It’s always been framed as an equitable exchange.
What we’re seeing after the Harvey stories is that it is NEVER equitable when it involves a young, impressionable girl trying to break into the industry and a middle aged man running a studio or occupying any other powerful position. It’s coercion and it’s abusive.
I don’t really like Gwyneth, but poor Gwyneth, but also think about how strong she is too. This has been gossiped about for years, probably right behind her back. She has been labeled in gossip as having slept with him willing for so long. She’s had to have known he was spreading that. There have been all kinds of rumors about her and Harvey. I still don’t understand how she was able to keep up such a friendly relationship with him and keep going forward, not shaming her but if it were me I would have quit acting after him. I don’t think that I’d have the willpower to keep going after being so humiliated.
Harvey is so disgusting.
And it was her and Angelina coming forward that really burst the dam and got people to believe this was serious and wasn’t going to be brushed under the carpet as another ‘attempt to smear’ Wankstain.
I have mad respect for her doing that with the knowledge of how people spoke of her as owing her career to Harvey.
But this happens all the time to women, teenage girls, etc. I think most of us at some point in life have gotten a reputation for sleeping with guys/men when they haven’t. (I’m sure this happens to men too but I can’t speak on that.) If you have a goal in life you don’t just give up on it because some dude talked sh*t, you just deal with it and move on. Plus she says she didn’t sleep with him so she knows the truth which frankly is all that matters. My point is that I don’t think she’s any stronger or more humiliated than any other woman famous or not that’s dealt with this so why shouldn’t she continue acting or doing what she wants? This type of treatment has been, unfortunately, a fact of life for women in general.
Have women gone through as much and/or worse than Gwyneth and without access to the resources and general privilege (wealth, fame, WHITENESS) that she enjoys?
Yes absolutely.
But very few of us know what it’s like to experience this humiliation so publicly. If the world thought your career was solely due to sleeping with the man who sexually harassed or assaulted you, you would understand. Not only is your career tarnished and undermined by the rumors but the subsequent shame of being a survivor is repressed and eventually amplified, when/if the truth is revealed. There is literally nowhere to hide and very few people who know the truth about your experience.
So I would argue that the actresses who have dealt with the blowback from the Weinstein revelations are dealing with a different kind of hell–maybe not the same as those of us without their resource–but still pretty terrible. One thing that should be a takeaway from #metoo is that even privilege, fame, wealth, notoriety isn’t enough to shield us.
Hi Kitten. I don’t know that it is any more public for her than it is for somebody else. She’s know in her circle of business contacts, friends, etc. that are in the entertainment industry. I’m known in my circle of contacts, friends, etc., in insurance industry, that person over there is known in her circle of contacts, friends, etc. in the health care industry. All of us are exposed to various people and situations where it would be equally as trying AND potentially public in each person’s life/industry to have to deal with some guy that says you had sex with him when you didn’t. I don’t agree that Paltrow is living another kind of hell. I will however feel as bad for her in this as I do insurance industry lady, or ER nurse lady, or attorney lady, etc. But referencing Diligent Diva above, she’s not the one that should be embarrassed and stop acting.
I’m with Kitten and DiligentDiva on this. It happens to women from all walks of life. But being a public figure and having it used against you for years or even decades- combined with the other pressures of fame – probably adds another layer to it. It’s just never a good thing- whether the target is a poor religious girl or a wealthy Hollywood one.
But Huckle, what you said about how common this is so true. It’s one of the reasons why respectability politics for young famous women should have been cancelled like yesterday: This narrative is imposed on women and underage girls who pursue careers whether they ‘keep it classy’ or not.
Yes – plenty of people posting on this site and others have been only to happy to spread these stories about multiple different actresses. It’s not just the Damons of this world who need to reconsider their behaviour.
Alicia Vikander, Jennifer Lawrence and Blake Lively are three names that always get brought in reference to women sleeping with Harvey with the latter two being called liars when they talked about their relationship with Harvey. I believe I read comments on here like “Well they weren’t victims because they actually wanted to sleep with him.” But here come all the self-righteous people who act like they had no hand or played no part in society pushing the idea of a woman having to have slept her way to the top.
I say this every time Jennifer Lawrence comes up, but she was already an “it” girl with an Academy Award nomination and two huge franchises by the time she worked with Harvey. If anything, he was jumping on her bandwagon to try and capitalize and maintain his reputation as a star-maker.
Has Blake Lively ever even worked with him?
I believe Alicia Vikander was in one film that Weinstein Co distributed – not produced. He bought Tulip Fever after the fact, so he wasn’t involved at all in the casting. Yet again, he started talking her up publicly trying to jump on the bandwagon after she became the new it-girl for Ex Machina and The Danish Girl.
People have just fallen for his PR manipulation. He hasn’t been a star-maker for a long time.
ETA: Correction, Alicia was also in that flop Burnt. But again, TWC didn’t produce it, they only distributed it.
I don’t think Blake’s ever done a film with him. She was on a panel with him and wore Marchesa a couple of times.
“If anything, he was jumping on her bandwagon to try and capitalize and maintain his reputation as a star-maker.”
Agreed, and I suspect that Weinstein used a lot of liberal A-listers and politicians this way, whether they were aware of certain truths about him or not. There were some people he neither sexually assaulted nor slept with. Associations with them were about good pr- both for his company and for himself. This is good for him not only as a business, but for Harvey Weinstein the person and the image of himself that he needed to promote, as a calculating man who had already been working to keep victims quiet for a long time. Remember how at least one of the women he’s harassed (I believe it was Kate Beckinsale, but for some reason, I think someone else said this too) said that he actually asked her if he had tried anything with her before? If he had truly slept with or assaulted every single woman he’s ever encountered, the creep wouldn’t have even had to ask that.
Yes. The sad thing is that it’s not even JUST the rapey male conservative MRAs who have been behaving this way. It’s already disgusting (and dangerous enough) when men use casting couch rumors about both adult and underage starlets as slut-shaming material and fapping material at the same time, or try to say women aren’t to be believed when sexual matters are being discussed.
Makes me feel sick that he used her name and success to manipulate other actress into thinking that was the only way to get ahead in the acting world.
I hope he sees the inside of a jail cell.
I do like Gwyneth as an actress and I can’t imagine how horrible it is to have people believing you did something that you didn’t do…and for years.
This story about Gwyneth also persisted on the Internet for many years in blind items and openly…which tells you how much Harvey was saying this out loud. Just like the story about her “stealing” the Shakespeare in Love script from Winona. I think the phone calls are so devastating because she is probably talking to women who did not resist because they thought she had done this to get all she had.
And there’s little, if anything, they can do about it when a rumor like that starts. A woman’s denial is automatically seen as confirmation that a sexual rumor about her is true.
It’s terrible to think about how easily casting couch can result in those who were sexually harassed or assaulted being stuck with false rumors of servicing the same person who harassed or abused them, without people even knowing it. The predators benefit from that- one way or another. But it’s not surprising to learn that the list of names Weinstein tossed around weren’t just his willing participants. (Most of the names probably weren’t). It will include victims as well as women who turned him down and got away.
I don’t like Goopy but at never thought she slept with HW. In fact, I (naively) thought he wouldn’t even try because of her Hollywood connections….wrong.
That’s exactly how I feel. I don’t like her and never have, but it’s because of her denial of the fact that her family connections helped her career and her insufferable smugness. I never thought she slept her way into jobs, or into her Oscar. Men lie about sleeping with girls and women all of the time, It pathetic behaviour and there’s no excuse for it under any circumstances. How horrible for her that Harvey Weinstein used her as an example to manipulate other actresses into accepting his advances. The fact that she went to her agent and nothing happened ,shows that even someone with a Hollywood silver spoon in her mouth, wasn’t safe from someone like HW and his ilk. The whole thing makes me sick.
Gwyneth and Angelina and even Mira Sorvino, coming from acting families. I would have thought like you, that he would have gone after “anonymous” girls and not some that came into the business with some degree of name recognition and clout. He was so arrogant. It beggars belief that he got away with it so long. He had such a support system in place to keep feeding him virgin sacrifices. It’s pure evil. Some of it is the patriarchal system to blame. Everyone all too ready to believe it was some consensual casting couch deal. Distasteful, but good gossip fodder. I’m not leaving myself out of that. I would have probably believed that too, over.. this. Who could imagine the scope of this horror?
Addendum: I used the term “virgin sacrifices” for effect, not saying anything about anyone’s personal sexual history before or after which is nobody’s business, and this is not meant pejoratively. I kind of regret my terminology–don’t read anything into it. The way this system of agents and et cetera just fed young women to him made me think of him as a literal monster out of mythology. Carry on.
This is the master-manipulator at work. By saying that Gwyneth, with all her connections in the industry, had to sleep with him to get import parts, how would lesser-known actresses see that there was any alternative? Clever. Nasty.
I don’t know about timelines, but Gwyneth dated Ben Affleck later, I think. I can’t help wondering if she confided in him. If she did, it didn’t seem to have much of an effect on him, did it? Awful.
Going by these post Gwen was with Pitt when she was assaulted by Harvey. She later dated Ben and did confide in him about what happened with Harvey and he told Matt about it.
As I said in another post the biggest thing we can take away from this is that we the public need to stop believing in these BS tabloids stories/smear campaigns put out by the media, with no proof to back it up.
Look at all the a-holes in the comments who’ve decided the biggest takeaway that Paltrow, a rich, privileged woman who could have lived a life of another kind of privilege and who has in fact done so, slept with Weinstein after all. This is why I believe the sea change is an illusion. So many people here desperate to believe the most terrible things they can of a woman.
I loved Sliding Doors!
So who did Goop cheat on Brad with? Her Sliding Doors costar?
I believe Harvey infected everything around him and it was never going to end well. He chose impressionable young women and approached them in the way he knew would work, but when it didn’t, he resorted to rape. When you get sucked into a Harvey world, it can feel exhilarating because they focus so strongly on you, but it isn’t until later you realize you are dealing with an evil human being. It is difficult to figure out how to get away from them at that point.
I think for the rest of their lives women will be having new realizations about their entanglements with him and the prices many of them ended up paying. None of it good because they will always be connected to him.
With our new outlook, we can now educate girls not to try to be nice to the predator or go along with him. Not that it is her fault if she does but it confuses her truth and prolongs her ability to process what happened. We don’t owe them comfort or ease or to be nice.
Harvey took advantage of Gwenyth’s self-admitted problem with fidelity and threw himself into the mix by dropping the It girl of the moment’s name. He is a clever, tricky a-hole and she couldn’t say anything, but she did say she left Hollywood because of him.
One of the reasons I believe what she says is plausible is because it has been done to me before and there is no way to get to every person and tell them the truth. It almost cost my relationship with my husband when we were dating. It is insidious and an old trick.
Any man who boasts about sleeping with a woman to others, privately or publicly, is total trash, pure and simple. That applies whether it is true or not.
Ratner boasted repeatedly about Olivia Munn too. He did it not just for his own ego but to intimidate her, it was an extension of his harassment. This boasting is part of the predator playbook.
He also probably lied about her to a million men and fucked up her career a la Gretchen Mol. You might find her annoying, but she was a decent actress who disappeared the second she hit thirty until she got into Iron Man. So…
I never understood why people thought Paltrow didn’t win that Oscar on her own merits. I guess people forget now, but at the time Shakespeare In Love was a big, big deal (13 Oscar noms, great box office results and it’s still at 92% on RT) and Paltrow was seen as a very talented young actress who played that role perfectly. Her career and reputation faltered after the Oscars, starting with the jokes about her pretty much falling apart on stage in that bad pink dress, but before that she was golden.
In hindsight Cate Blanchett seems the obvious choice, but aside from her performance Elizabeth was a pretty mediocre film, and Cate was very new to Hollywood then. At the time it was no surprise she didn’t win. Paltrow had pretty much been a lock for months.
Damn your dick Weinstein, you’ve made me side with the princess of pretention.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
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