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After previously alluding to having her own story about sexual harassment to tell, Uma Thurman has opened up about her experiences with sexual harassment at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, as well as an unnamed actor when she was just 16 years old. In a brand new exposé published by The New York Times on Saturday morning, the actress detailed a series of incidents with the Hollywood executive from which she emerged “very disheveled” and “upset.”
Thurman stated that she knows her inability to share about the incidents up until this point has caused harm to Weinstein’s later victims. She added that her decision to speak out and provide intimate details came from a personal feeling that her silence has gone on for way too long.
“The complicated feeling I have about Harvey is how bad I feel about all the women that were attacked after I was…I am one of the reasons that a young girl would walk into his room alone, the way I did,” she tells author Maureen Dowd. “Quentin used Harvey as the executive producer of ‘Kill Bill,’ a movie that symbolizes female empowerment. And all these lambs walked into slaughter because they were convinced nobody rises to such a position who would do something illegal to you, but they do.”
In the interview, she describes how the first “attack” occurred in Weinstein’s suite at the Savoy Hotel in London. “It was such a bat to the head. He pushed me down. He tried to shove himself on me. He tried to expose himself. He did all kinds of unpleasant things. But he didn’t actually put his back into it and force me. You’re like an animal wriggling away, like a lizard. I was doing anything I could to get the train back on the track. My track. Not his track.”
A second incident, after Thurman received “a 26-inch-wide vulgar bunch of roses” from Weinstein that was delivered to her house with a note that read ‘You have great instincts,’ happened when she attempted to confront him about the behavior. She was staying with her friend Ilona Herman, Robert De Niro’s longtime makeup artist, at the time.
Thurman, who brought Herman with her as support, had asked Weinstein to meet her at the Savoy bar. Weinstein’s assistants lured Thurman upstairs to Weinstein’s room after convincing her that the incident was a misunderstanding and that the two have “so many projects together.” Thurman details how she remained firm with Weinstein but her memory of the incident fades in the story. She finally returned to the hotel bar to meet Herman but things did not seem to have went well. “She was very disheveled and so upset and had this blank look,” Herman recalled.
Thurman ended the interview by speaking more on a general sense of how women are “conditioned” to feel about love and sex. “Personally, it has taken me 47 years to stop calling people who are mean to you ‘in love’ with you,” she stated. “It took a long time because I think that as little girls we are conditioned to believe that cruelty and love somehow have a connection and that is like the sort of era that we need to evolve out of.”
Michael is a music and television junkie keen on most things that are not a complete and total bore. You can follow him on Twitter — @Tweetskoor
