Tired of what she called ”salacious, slut-shaming and misogynist” rumors that she exchanged sexual favors with Harvey Weinstein to further her career, actress Gretchen Mol has penned a first-person piece to say the claims are “not true.”
”For 10 years or so, I’ve been aware of rumors that I had some kind of transactional relationship with Harvey Weinstein,” she wrote for the Hollywood Reporter, noting that they started on a gossip website and got combined with details from her Wikipedia page and “stories about a movie mogul who was known for harassing women” to become a “viral rumor.”
“Over the years, it was gleefully embroidered, becoming increasingly bizarre and baroque — but the salacious, slut-shaming and misogynist message to the fable remained the same: In Hollywood, a young woman must build her career by humiliating herself and sleeping with powerful men,” the actress wrote.
”I did not exchange sexual favors with Harvey Weinstein, or anyone, for advancement in my career,” the “Boardwalk Empire” star affirmed.
“I was never paid any settlement. The truth is that I have never been alone in a room with Harvey Weinstein.”
Mol said she’d heard similar rumors about Weinstein and other actresses and assumed they, too, were false.
“I knew that it was not true in my case, so I naively assumed it was equally false in general,” she wrote.
“The consistent implication was that actresses were eager for the bargain, that we wanted fame and fortune so desperately that we would make this kind of nauseating concession. This is another kind of misogyny, and blame-shifting.”
The actress added that she hopes others who have had similar experiences “can put this poison aside.”
She said she decided to pen the piece after she was contacted by both the New Yorker and the New York Times for their exposés on Weinstein and realized her account would not appear in either, which it did not. Since those pieces were published, Mol said, some have been questioning her silence.
“I know the impact this has had on me is nothing compared to the trauma of a direct assault,” she writes in the Hollywood Reporter. “But I feel they are related. It has many times filled me with a feeling of helplessness, anger and shame.
“The shameless behavior of this powerful man found shameless co-conspirators in people hiding behind screen handles, who then tried to push their foulness onto women who are blameless.
“We have no reason to feel ashamed,” Mol concluded.