As more and more women — and men — in Hollywood come forward with experiences of sexual harassment and assault, the number of powerful men implicated is skyrocketing. The latest is Steven Seagal, who we now know mostly as a ponytailed joke in a silken karate gi, but for a while was a major presence in the industry, as well as a physically imposing figure who practiced Aikido and played Navy SEALS.
Portia de Rossi posted to Twitter today her horrifying #MeToo audition experience with Seagal.
My final audition for a Steven Segal movie took place in his office. He told me how important it was to have chemistry off-screen as he sat me down and unzipped his leather pants. I️ ran out and called my agent. Unfazed, she replied, “well, I didn’t know if he was your type.”
— Portia de Rossi (@portiaderossi) November 8, 2017
Hopefully, she dropped her agent soon after.
And de Rossi isn’t alone in her allegations against Seagal. Julianna Marguiles this week recounted her own audition story — this one involving a gun.
“I got to the hotel around 10:40, and she [the casting director] wasn’t there. And he was alone and he made sure that I saw his gun, which I had never seen a gun in real life,” Margulies continued. “I got out of there unscathed. … I never was raped, and I never was harmed. I don’t know how I got out of that hotel room.”
Margulies told Hutt she felt she had been “set up” by the casting director, and learned from the experience that she should never go into private meetings alone.
Days before de Rossi and Margulies, actress Lisa Guerrero was the first to come forward, telling the Hollywood Reporter about meeting Seagal for — you guessed it — an audition. Seagal answered the door in a silk kimono with nothing underneath and when Guerrero refused to join him in his dressing room, she was cut from the film.
(Via Vulture)
