Rose McGowan ‘faked orgasm’ to get out of Harvey Weinstein ordeal
ARRIVING at the exclusive hotel, the 23-year-old aspiring actress felt she was on the cusp of her dreams coming true.
Rose McGowan was having a key meeting with Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein “to plot out the grand arc of my career”.
But what transpired, says Rose, was a terrifying encounter in his Jacuzzi, which left her “scarred for life” at the hands of the man she labels “the Pig Monster”.
Last autumn Rose publicly accused Weinstein of sexually abusing her at that meeting — and more than 80 women have now come forward with similar accusations against him.
In a new book Rose, now 44, has for the first time detailed exactly what she claims happened on that fateful morning at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.
She recalls how, when she arrived at the restaurant of the hotel in Park City, Utah, she was told Weinstein was stuck on a call and she should meet him in his suite.
There, she alleges film producer Weinstein quickly stripped her naked.
“It all happens so fast,” she writes in her autobiography, Brave.
“My clothes are getting peeled off me. I back into the wall, but there’s nowhere to go.
“I don’t know what’s happening. My sweater is being pulled over my head and his hand pulls my pants down. He bends over and pulls my shoes off.
“What the f*** is happening? I’m picked up and placed on the edge of the Jacuzzi. I am naked, up to my knees in the hot water.
“I curl into myself. I did what so many who experience trauma do — I disassociated and left my body.”
In sickening detail, Rose recounts faking an orgasm as Weinstein performed a sex act on her, to bring the ordeal to an end quickly.
All the while, she says, tears were rolling down her cheeks.
Afterwards, despite her emotional turmoil, she was whisked off to promote her movie Phantoms and pose for shots with her co-star, previously identified by Rose as Ben Affleck.
Rose, who was named one of Time magazine’s People Of The Year 2017 for leading the call against Hollywood’s exploitation of women, writes: “I am shaking and my eyes fill with tears. I say where I’ve just come from, and my co-star says, ‘Goddamn it. I told him to stop doing that.’ ”
The following year, aiming to make a point about the objectification of women, she famously appeared in a daring see-through dress at the 1998 MTV Music Awards with then boyfriend, goth rocker Marilyn Manson.
She writes: “I thought, You know what? You want to objectify me? You want to see a body? . . . I’ll show you a body.’ It was misinterpreted and sexualised, which was the exact opposite point I was trying to make.”
I’m naked in the water. I did what trauma victims do…I disassociated and left my body
Rose recounting when Weinstein allegedly assaulted her
Having been advised that her accusations against Weinstein — one of the most powerful men in the industry — would never be believed, she instead reportedly received a £70,000 payout from Weinstein.
But Rose claims that as a result, she found herself blacklisted from roles until she eventually found fame playing one of a trio of witches on the TV series Charmed, between 2001 and 2006 — an experience she described as a “prison for my mind”.
A few weeks ago, after it was revealed women were dressing all in black at this year’s Golden Globes awards in protest against harassment and assault in Hollywood, Rose took to Twitter to slam actresses who “happily work for the Pig Monster”.
Tragically, though, Rose’s alleged encounter with Weinstein was not her first experience of abuse.
Her memoir was published on Tuesday, and in a review the New York Times writes: “McGowan describes a life of almost ceaseless abuse, of falling into the clutches of one sadistic ogre after another as powerful forces conspired to crush her rogue spirit.”
Born in Florence, Italy, she was raised in the polygamous cult known as the Children of God, founded by accused paedophile and anti-Semite David Berg.
Berg would make his followers sleep on plastic mats and wear brown rags for clothes, and is widely reported to have expressed regret at not being able to sleep with his mother.
Physical violence was part and parcel of the cult, and then the leaders started preaching about sex between adults and children. In one disturbing anecdote, Rose describes seeing an 11-year-old being forced to sit next to a naked man with his penis resting on her leg as he massaged her back.
“Even then I knew none of it was ‘normal,’ whatever normal was,” she writes.
Rose says she was not sexually abused as a child herself, and put her escape down to wearing her hair short and dressing in her brother’s old clothes.
Aged ten, after her dad Daniel had woken up to the cult’s disturbing practises, she and her parents fled from it, moving to Oregon, US.
When her parents divorced, life was split between living with her manic father in Seattle and her unreliable mother, Terri. Then, at 14, Rose took a job as a film extra to pay the £211 a month in rent her father was demanding and had her first taste of Hollywood’s seemingly ingrained misogyny.
A man in his 40s from the movie set invited her back for a party, but when she arrived alone, he pounced.
“He promptly pulled down my shirt and fondled my breasts,” she writes. “Of course, it was me who felt dirty and ashamed.”
At 15, she moved to Los Angeles with her mum for a blissful but short-lived time. When Rose’s mum found a new man, she asked Rose’s then 20-year-old boyfriend, William, if he would look after her daughter.
The teenager had only been seeing him for three weeks and William turned out to be another monster in Rose’s life. After William’s mum died, Rose claims he turned to drugs and became erratic, often abandoning her without food or money for days.
Heartbreakingly, she writes: “Since I was anorexic, it was kind of OK.”
She writes about how she would cut out pictures of skinny models from Vogue and Cosmopolitan to use as “thinspiration” while taking laxatives and only allowing herself a bowl of pasta every few days.
Another ill-fated relationship was with nightclub owner Brett Cantor, who was later stabbed to death.
His murder is still unsolved, something that weighs heavily on Rose.
I told Ben Affleck where I’d been and he said: ‘Goddamn it. I told him to stop doing that’
Rose on how she knew had told her Phantoms co-star about the alleged attack
Her high-profile relationship with musician Manson brought some calm and happiness. Rose paints a quaint picture of life at home with the rocker, with her ordering items from the Martha Stewart store and him painting her Boston terriers.
Yet in the midst of her happiness her previous ordeals were never far away and would manifest in night terrors in which Rose would wake screaming and sweating.
She and Manson split in 2001 after a two-year engagement.
There was more heartache with a short-lived marriage to artist Davey Detail, which ended in 2016, and before him, a fling with married From Dusk Til Dawn director Robert Rodriguez, who she claims was jealous, manipulative and controlling.
Referring to him only as RR, she alleges he threatened to give her role in the movie Planet Terror to Jessica Alba after Rose lost too much weight from stress.
She also claims that despite telling him of her ordeal at the hands of Weinstein, Rodriguez deliberately included a scene in Planet Terror in which Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino attacks her.
Rose says he then sold the film to Weinstein’s company, Miramax.
To Rose, it was a final betrayal.
She said: “I can’t tell you what it was like to be sold into the hands of the man who had assaulted me and scarred me for life.”
How good it must feel, then, to finally see movie kingpin Weinstein knocked off his throne.
- Brave, by Rose McGowan, published by HQ, an imprint of Harper Collins, is available now.
Email 'prove its lies'
JUST a day after Rose’s book hit the shelves, Weinstein’s legal team spoke out to address the allegations against the disgraced producer for the first time since he apologised in a statement last October.
And his lawyer says Weinstein has produced emails between himself and actor Ben Affleck, as well as Jill Messick, who was Rose’s manager at the time, which the producer claims prove his innocence.
In one email, a few months before the accusations first came to light, Ben allegedly wrote: “She never told me nor did I ever infer that she was attacked by anyone. Any accounts to the contrary are false. I have no knowledge about anything Rose did or claimed to have done.”
The email from Jill claims Rose consented to getting into the hot tub.
Yet Rose writes of calling Jill in floods of tears and claims that Jill told her what happened would ultimately help her career.
Weinstein’s lawyer said: “Watching the ‘performance’ by Rose McGowan as she looks to promote her new book . . . has made it impossible to remain quiet as she tries to smear Mr Weinstein with a bold lie that is denied not only by Mr Weinstein himself, but by at least two witnesses.”
Director Robert Rodriguez has also responded to accusations in the book.
He said in a statement: “There are some key factual errors in the piece.
“These inaccuracies may appear to put me at odds with Rose, but I have no quarrel with her.