French actress Florence Darel is the latest woman to claim she was victimized by Harvey Weinstein in a hotel room — unbothered that his wife was next door.
Weinstein began pursuing the then-26-year-old in 1994 after meeting her at a premiere of “Fausto,” a small-budget movie he’d bought.
Darel managed to brush off his requests to get together for a year before finally relenting and agreeing to meet in 1995 at his suite at The Ritz in Paris.
“You can’t afford not to go,” her agent told her at the time.
Weinstein first tried to convince Darel to collaborate with him on a film — then began complaining that there was no Jacuzzi in the room.
“He started to tell me that he found me very attractive and wanted to have relations with me,” Darel told newspaper Le Parisien, according to People magazine. “I told him I was very in love with my companion. He replied that didn’t bother him at all and offered to have me be his mistress a few days a year. That way we could continue to work together. Basically, it was ‘If you want to continue in America, you have to go through me.’ ”
Darel said at the time, Weinstein’s first wife, Eve Chilton, was in the room next door.
The actress bolted, telling him, “I’m sorry, I have to leave.”
“I was in shock. I was in shock,” Darel, now 49, told People. “I was astonished. When you have someone so physically disgusting in front of you, continuing and continuing as though this was all perfectly normal … What happened to me may not be illegal but it was inappropriate. Very inappropriate.”
She said she only told her agent and boyfriend about the alleged incident.
“What could I do? Could I go to the police and say, ‘This disgusting man made me an indecent proposal in his hotel room at The Ritz’?” she said. “They would have laughed at me. Even when you are raped, it is difficult to prove and society in many cases puts the burden of proof on women.”