ZitatThe New Yorker published a bombshell report on Harvey Weinstein on Tuesday, that alleges the embattled mogul raped three women, including actress Asia Argento.
The story, written by Ronan Farrow, claims Weinstein forcibly performed or received oral sex and also forced vaginal sex on women. It also contains on-the-record accounts from Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette of encounters or business meetings with Weinstein that devolved into being propositioned sexually. The deeply reported story will likely exacerbate Weinstein’s problems at a time when reports of previous instances of harassment have left him ostracized in Hollywood and fighting for his professional life.
“I know he has crushed a lot of people before,” Argento said in the story. “That’s why this story — in my case, it’s twenty years old, some of them are older — has never come out.”
Sorvino, who won an Oscar appearing in “Mighty Aphrodite” for Miramax, Weinstein’s company, told Farrow that Weinstein “harassed her” and pressured her to have a sexual relationship while she appeared in films for Miramax. At the Toronto Film Festival in 1995, she claims he propositioned her, and later showed up weeks later at her apartment after midnight.
In Toronto, Sorvino said Weinstein “… started massaging my shoulders, which made me very uncomfortable, and then tried to get more physical, sort of chasing me around.” Arquette describes encountering a bathrobe-wearing Weinstein in his hotel room, where he tried to intimidate her into sexual contact. Both Sorvino and Arquette claim that after they rejected Weinstein’s advances, their careers suffered.
Through a spokeswoman, Weinstein denied that he had assaulted women.