Harvey Weinstein may have been fired by the very company than brandishes his name, but that doesn’t mean the beleaguered Hollywood mogul — who begged his powerful industry friends to save his job — is off the hook. Lena Dunham, Jimmy Kimmel, George Clooney and others are beginning to speak out about the revelations from the original New York Times investigation. And thanks to a concurrent bit of investigative reporting just published by The New Yorker, everyone is going to keep talking about the many allegations now pinned to Weinstein’s name.
That’s because among the many women NBC News anchor Ronan Farrow talked to during the past 10 months, three have alleged that Weinstein raped them, including Italian film actress and director Asia Argento and Lucia Evans. Four other women The New Yorker spoke with “experienced unwanted touching that could be classified as an assault.” And if that weren’t enough, The New Yorker also published a two-minute audio recording obtained from a 2015 New York Police Department sting in which Weinstein “admits to groping a Filipina-Italian model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez.”
In the audio clip, which is incredibly upsetting, Weinstein describes himself as “a famous guy” while repeatedly imposing himself upon Gutierrez. She repeatedly denies his advances, telling him how uncomfortable she is with the situation, but the producer simply describes his behavior as something he’s “used to” and accuses her of “making a big scene.”
Meanwhile, former Weinstein collaborators like Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette told Farrow “they suspected that, after they rejected Weinstein’s advances or complained about them to company representatives, Weinstein had them removed from projects or dissuaded people from hiring them.” Additional sources The New Yorker spoke with confirmed the mogul “frequently bragged about planting items in media outlets about those who spoke against him.” The article — which you can read in full here — is a long, emotionally taxing read, but it is definitely worth your complete attention.
(Via The New Yorker)
