Celebrity hotelier André Balazs has been accused of groping multiple women — including the wife of actor Jason Bateman, according to a new report.
Bateman and his wife, actress Amanda Anka, were attending a dinner party at the Chiltern Firehouse in London, which is owned by Balazs, in Nov. 2014, when the hotelier took the group on a tour of the property.
During the tour, the guests — which also included stars Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis — had to climb a firehouse-style ladder to get to an upstairs room. As Anka, who was wearing a leather dress, climbed up, Balazs put his hand under her skirt and grabbed her crotch, The New York Times reported.
“I witnessed behavior by André Balazs that was inappropriate and offensive,” said Mary Elizabeth Ellis, the wife of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” actor Charlie Day.
Bateman spit gum in Balazs’s face, and the couple quickly left the hotel, according to the newspaper.
“On behalf of Jason Bateman and Amanda Anka, we can confirm that the account of André Balazs’s outrageous and vile behavior on that night in London is factual,” the couple wrote in a statement. “His actions were dealt with at the time.”
One of Balazs’s former employees, who identified herself as Sarah, claims she was also groped by the hotelier while working at the Chateau Marmont, one of his properties in Los Angeles.
In 1991, Balazs asked Sarah out to dinner, and afterward, they stopped by a mud-wrestling club, she says. That’s where he allegedly grabbed her by the arm, pushed her against a wall and covered her mouth with his own. He then put his hand down her pants and stuck his fingers in her vagina, she says.
“I just froze,” Sarah told The Times.
When Sarah confronted him in an email, Balazs insisted he didn’t remember what had happened.
A 26-year-old media executive, who declined to give her name, also said Balazs grabbed her crotch as she was walking to the bathroom at a downtown party during New York Fashion Week in 2013.
“I jumped,” she said, adding that she was “humiliated” by the incident.