Rose McGowan Says Harvey Weinstein Raped Her
Previously, the actress had spoken only in broad terms about an incident involving Weinstein, which reportedly led to the producer paying her $100,000 in a 1997 settlement
Rose McGowan, one of the most vocal denouncers of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, had her account temporarily suspended by Twitter early Thursday morning. “TWITTER HAS SUSPENDED ME. THERE ARE POWERFUL FORCES AT WORK. BE MY VOICE,” the actress posted on Instagram, sharing a screenshot of the message Twitter sent her notifying her of the suspension.
McGowan is one of 28 women who have alleged that Weinstein sexually harassed, assaulted, or raped them over the past several decades. Last week, The New York Times published an exposé detailing Weinstein’s behavior toward several women, including McGowan. According to the Times, McGowan reached a $100,000 settlement with Weinstein in 1997 after an “episode in a hotel room during the Sundance Film Festival.”
Since the initial Times piece, more allegations have come to light. A New Yorker piece published on Tuesday included the accounts of 13 women who accused Weinstein of sexual harassment or assault, including three who accused him of rape. Later that day, the Times published a second piece featuring on-the-record interviews with Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and five other actresses, who also detailed instances in which they say Weinstein sexually harassed them. On Wednesday, Cara Delevingne and Léa Seydoux shared individual accounts of sexual harassment by Weinstein.
In that time, McGowan has been one of the most active voices in condemning Weinstein and demanding large reform in Hollywood. She has called for board members of the Weinstein Company to resign, and has also directly confronted actors like Ben Affleck, rejecting their on-the-record statements in response to the Weinstein allegations and accusing them of looking the other way when the producer’s behavior was most rampant.
According to the message McGowan received from Twitter, her account will be restored once she deletes “tweets that violate our rules.” (Because it’s not a permanent suspension, like that of Milo Yiannopoulos, you can still look at her account.) It’s unclear, however, which of her tweets the company is referring to.
McGowan’s suspension is the latest example of Twitter’s confounding, arcane enforcement of its rules regarding online harassment. For example, users reporting messages that threaten rape have often been told that those messages don’t violate the company’s rules. Tweets from one of the alleged victims of a massive, ongoing Hollywood controversy apparently cross the line for Twitter. Threats of nuclear war, though? No big deal.
Update: In a series of tweets, Twitter explained why it suspended McGowan, and noted that her account has been unlocked.
Update No. 2: After Twitter reinstated McGowan’s account Thursday, the actress directed a series of tweets at Amazon Studios and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. She tweeted that the head of Amazon Studios—she could have been referring to Roy Price, though she didn’t mention him by name—knew that “HW” had raped her. “I forcefully begged studio head to do the right thing,” she said in another tweet. “I was ignored. Deal was done. Amazon won a dirty Oscar.” She also tweeted to ask Bezos to stop “funding rapists, alleged pedos and sexual harassers.”
Weinstein has been involved with two Amazon Studios productions: The Romanoffs, from Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner (due out in 2018), and an untitled David O. Russell drama starring Julianne Moore and Robert De Niro, which was announced in November 2016.
According to The New York Times, Weinstein and McGowan were involved in an incident in a hotel room during the Sundance Film Festival. The incident, according to the paper, prompted the mogul to pay the actress a $100,000 settlement in 1997, which seems likely to have included a non-disclosure agreement. McGowan didn’t speak on the record to either the Times or The New Yorker, but she has implied that Weinstein sexually assaulted her, and in October 2016, she said that she was raped by a studio executive.
