Another actress is coming out, adding to the mounting accusations against Harvey Weinstein.
Actress Kate Beckinsale claims Weinstein hit on her when she was a minor– only 17 years old. She said she was instructed to meet him at the Savoy Hotel in what she assumed would be a conference room. After all, that’s typically where business meetings are held.
Nope. Weinstein opened the door to his hotel room, wearing nothing but a bathrobe. She said she was incredibly naive and tried not to think anything of it.
“I was incredibly naive and young and it did not cross my mind that this older, unattractive man would expect me to have any sexual interest in him,” she said. “After declining alcohol and announcing that I had school in the morning I left, uneasy but unscathed.”
Years later, he brought up that particular encounter, and Beckinsale “realized he couldn’t remember if he had assaulted me or not.”
She did end up standing up for herself multiple times, and he responded by calling her a “c*nt”
“I had what I thought were boundaries – I said no to him professionally many times over the years-some of which ended up with him screaming at me calling me a c*nt and making threats, some of which made him laughingly tell people oh ‘Kate lives to say no to me,'” she said.
“It speaks to the status quo in this business that I was aware that standing up for myself and saying no to things, while it did allow me to feel uncompromised in myself, undoubtedly harmed my career and was never something I felt supported by anyone other than my family,” she continued. “I would like to applaud the women who have come forward , and to pledge that we can from this create a new paradigm where producers,managers,executives and assistants and everyone who has in the past shrugged and said ‘well, that’s just Harvey /Mr X/insert name here’ will realize that we in numbers can affect real change.”