Rose McGowan Says Hollywood "Blacklisted" Her After She Was Raped
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Charmed actress Rose McGowan has been outspoken on Twitter about Harvey Weinstein following the New York Times' bombshell investigation into his alleged sexual harassment and assaults. McGowan also used the platform recently to accuse Weinstein of raping her when she was younger. Now, in an interview published on Saturday by the Observer, she details the fallout from reporting the assault.
In the piece—the interview for which took place back in January—McGowan explains that she didn't report the alleged assault to the police because a criminal lawyer told her that she was unlikely to win. "Also, I didn’t want his name next to mine in my obituary," she told the Observer. "His name doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as mine when I’m dead."
McGowan did, however, tell the studio. On Twitter, McGowan said she went to Roy Price, the head of Amazon Studios, to report the incident but was told they couldn't do anything because there was "no proof." In her interview with the Observer, she elaborated: "They threatened [me] with being blacklisted," she said. "I was blacklisted after I was raped, because I got raped, because I said something … but only like internally."
In 1997, McGowan reached a $100,000 settlement with the Weinstein, which she cites in the interview as "an admission of guilt" on Weinstein's part. She also claims to have had between 150 and 200 people she could subpoena to support her testimony and implied she also had physical proof. "I had three surgeries on my wrist and elbow," she said. "I think that’s fair enough."
McGowan also vows that she's committed to fighting back against those who are "aiding and abetting" sex crimes in the film industry. "They blame the victim, they do all that shit," she told the Observer. "They are bred to put fear into people and that’s what they do, they’re bred to put fear into the publishers and lawyers and they overreach it, and I’m going to do what I can and come out as hard as I can."
In the 10 months since the interview took place, McGowan has done exactly that. Since the Weinstein scandal broke, she's put Amazon's studio on blast for failing to act (Price is now suspended) and called Ben Affleck a "liar" after he issued a statement claiming that the allegations against Weinstein made him "sick". Some suspect that the suspension of McGowan's account was the result of the latter move, though Twitter says she'd tweeted a private phone number, which constituted a violation of terms.
But after celebrities and women boycotted the social media site in solidarity with McGowan, her account was reinstated, and she resumed calling out the hypocrisy of Hollywood. Recently, she's been throwing shots at men including Weinstein's brother and the current head of the Weinstein Company, Bob Weinstein; Woody Allen, who has also faced allegations of sexual assault and is reportedly "sad" about what's happening to Weinstein; and James Cordon, who joked about the scandal while hosting the amfAR Los Angeles Gala on Saturday.
Something tells us this isn't going to be the last we hear about the gross abuse of power in Hollywood. In fact, we have McGowan's forthcoming book Brave, which was recently bought by HarperCollins, to look forward to. She told the Observer that 85 percent of it had already been written and promised that it would address many of the incidents and issues she's been talking about in regard to sexual assault and Hollywood. “It's not a 'tell all,'" she said, "It’s a 'tell it how it is.'"
This story originally appeared on Glamour.
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