Actress Ashley Judd recalled an encounter she had with Harvey Weinstein some 20 years ago, where the producer allegedly sexually harassed her. Judd says she was fearful she was trapped by Weinstein in a hotel room and offered to have sex with him after she won an Oscar to avoid being raped.
“He kept coming at me with all this other stuff, and finally I just said, ‘When I win an Oscar in one of your movies, okay?’” Judd recalled offering.
“And he was like, ‘Yeah, when you get nominated.’ And I said, ‘No! When I win an Oscar.’ And I fled. I just fled,” she said.
The 49-year-old said she had no inkling as to what sort of man Weinstein was when she was first scheduled for a business appointment with the producer in a hotel room, alone.
“I had no warning,” said Judd, “I remember the lurch when I went to the desk and I said, ‘Mr. Weinstein, is he on the patio?’ and they said, ‘No, he’s in his room.'”
“I was like, ‘Ugh, are you kidding me?’” she thought, but proceeded anyway because she “had a business appointment.”
“That’s his pattern of sexual predation. That’s how he rolled,” the actress noted. “There’s this constant grooming negotiation going on.”
In Weinstein’s hotel room, the producer allegedly offered her a massage, which she declined.
“I thought ‘no’ meant ‘no,’” she said. “I fought with this volley of ‘nos,’ which he ignored. Who knows? Maybe he heard them as ‘maybe,’ maybe he heard them as ‘yeses,’ maybe they turned him on. I don’t know.”
She was then led to a closet, where she was asked to help Weinstein pick out his suit for the day. Judd said she felt trapped and Weinstein continued to pursue her, asking the actress to accompany him to the bathroom.
Judd then decided to promise to sleep with Weinstein at a later date, when she wins an Oscar, in order to avoid sexual assault, she claims.
Years after the hotel “meeting,” Judd said she saw Weinstein at a dinner party. ABC reports on the encounter:
[Judd] said he brought up “that little agreement we made”, and claimed he was “looking around for the material”.
Then he looked at her and said, “you know, Ashley, I’m going to let you out of that little agreement that we made”.
Judd reflected on the encounter and her reaction: “Am I proud of that? I’m of two minds: The part that shames myself says no,” she said. “The part of me that understands the way shame works says, ‘That was absolutely brilliant. Good job, kid. You got out of there. Well done.’”
