Emma called Harvey out
Harvey Weinstein didn’t just sexually harass women, he also [cough ALLEGEDLY cough] called them fat pigs. Emma Thompson tore a strip off him.
One film industry source told The New York Post that Weistein called then 24-year-old British-American actress Hayley Atwell she was a “fat pig on screen” while cast and crew were taking a break from filming Brideshead Revisited. The Hollywood veteran then allegedly told Atwell she should watch what she ate.
The unnamed source then went on to reveal that Atwell’s co-star Emma Thompson was furious with what happened.
“Emma called Harvey out for being a misogynist and a bully and really gave him a hard time,” the source said.
Hayley Atwell in Brideshead Revisited.
Harvey Weinstein.
I don’t call people fat pigs, because it’s disgusting, but if somebody threatened to pull my arms off if I didn’t agree that one of those people is a fat pig, I wouldn’t select the woman in the green frock.
Thompson has previously revealed she threatened to quit Brideshead Revisited because a co-star was told to lose weight. However, it was not known who allegedly made the insulting remarks until now.
Earlier this year, the Love Actually star told Swedish chat show Skavlan she was furious because her co-star already looked “exquisite” and there are too many people struggling with eating disorders.
“I said to them, ‘If you speak to her about this again, on any level, I will leave this picture. You are never to do that’,” she said. “It’s evil, what’s happening, what’s going on out there, and it’s getting worse.
Well done Emma. Live long and prosper.
Hayley “Agent Peggy Carter” Atwell herself? A “fat pig”? If he said that to Peggy, he would not wake up for the next thirty minutes. That show was the coolest thing Marvel ever did.
Yeah, I miss Agent Carter too.
More bombshell in the Weinstein story. This New Yorker article has a lot more details. The article references a recording of Weinstein admitting to having groped a model (who was recording him on instructions from the NYPD), but I couldn’t find a link to the recording at the New Yorker. Slate has it, though.
The story and the recording establish a clear pattern. You can see how this asshole used every bit of social pressure on these women. Come in to my hotel room, don’t embarrass me by arguing here in the hallway….
And I admit that my heart sank a couple of times when his victims reported how they went along with it, or decided not to complain. One even went on to have a consensual relationship with him, which doesn’t retroactively excuse the assault of course, but is just so sad.
And in those instances where someone did complain, there was retaliation in the form of items in the gossip pages about the victims. I think the next step is for journalists to name and shame the writers and editors of those gossip columns who acted as Harvey’s hatchet men and women.
Oh, man.
Thanks for the new info.
You’re welcome. If you’re working up a new post, you may want to include this follow-up NYT article with additional allegations from named actresses.
Emma has class. Good for her! It makes me wonder where the “class” in Hollywood is hiding. Weinstein needed someone to treat him like a perverted teenager long ago and give him a swift kick in the jewels.
Trouble is that it sounds like too many wanted something from him. They were unwilling to enforce their no. That made them easy pickings for a predator. Teach your girls to fight. Sometimes saying no is not enough.
To be fair, in many cases enforcing their no meant ending a career they were as entitled to as he was; “no” works against the woman, not the man in a position of power. That may sound selfish or shallow of the women, but seriously, if you love what you’re doing and want to keep doing it, you might sometimes find that you end up in a situation you don’t want to be in, because the deck is stacked against you.
Until we redeal those cards, and remove the penalties for women, I’m afraid things won’t be different. Very few people are cut out to be the hero at their own expense. Emma Thompson was able to enforce what she said because she was established enough that threatening to walk out was a real threat to the show, and she would not likely run her entire career. That isn’t the position where many of these other women found themselves. I for one cannot bring myself to condemn them for their failure to “enforce their no”. The consequence could be to lose everything they had ever worked for or wanted.
Lani @6,
I’m struggling a bit with your second paragraph. It seems to flirt with victim-blaming.
Sure, these women “wanted something from him” — they wanted acting roles or other opportunities. But those were entirely appropriate things to want from him. If you read the other recent pieces, you’ll see that some of these women didn’t even ask to meet with him personally, they asked for a casting executive or someone else lower-ranking, someone who they could reasonably expect to do a reading for and be judged on their own merits, without it being a favor or special treatment that might suggest a quid pro quo. In fact, Weinstein had a particular trick he liked to play where the actress would be told the meeting was with a female casting or other executive, and after a short interval, the female exec would leave and the actress was left alone with Weinstein.
If Weinstein had limited himself to ruthless young actresses who were eager to sleep their way to the top, this would never have become a story. Nor was he just another horny old rich guy who enjoyed taking advantage of the fact that there are lots of pretty young women who are sincerely attracted to wealth and power. Weinstein, it’s becoming clear, specifically liked to lure women into solo meetings under false pretenses, and then apply pressure and see what he could coerce them to do. It was obviously a turn-on for him.
As for teaching girls to “enforce their no,” and fight if necessary — I have really mixed feelings here. I get what you’re saying, and it sounds to me like Weinstein was the kind of guy who was willing to push boundaries a lot but didn’t want to think of himself as a rapist, so yeah, kneeing him in the groin and running for the hills might have been a safe strategy. But with some men, that might get you killed, and I’m reluctant to tell women that their own risk assessment is wrong. Yet on the other hand (or third or fourth hand or whatever I’m up to now), I too wish that these women hadn’t been conditioned to worry so much about causing a scene or violating some social script or whatever it was that made them stop resisting and go along just to get it over with.