Harvey Weinstein has responded to Salma Hayek’s allegations of sexual harassment and verbal abuse.
The actress made the accusation via a New York Times column in light of numerous other allegations that have been brought against the Hollywood mogul.
In the article, Hayek described Weinstein as a ‘monster’ and described how during the making of the film Frida, she repeatedly rejected his sexual advances "at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would show up unexpectedly, including one location where I was doing a movie he wasn’t even involved with.”
She wrote that she said: “No to me taking a shower with him. No to letting him watch me take a shower. No to letting him give me a massage. No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage. No to letting him give me oral sex. No to my getting naked with another woman. No, no, no, no, no … And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage.” At one point, he threatened: “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.”
He threatened to shut down the movie because her character didn’t have “sex appeal” and claimed that nobody would see it. He would only allow her to complete the movie if she agreed to do a sex scene with another woman in full-frontal nudity.
She described the emotional trauma of shooting the scene: “for the first and last time in my career, I had a nervous breakdown: My body began to shake uncontrollably, my breath was short and I began to cry and cry, unable to stop, as if I were throwing up tears... It was not because I would be naked with another woman. It was because I would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein... I had to take a tranquilizer, which eventually stopped the crying but made the vomiting worse.”
Weinstein has since denied forcing Hayek into the scene and denied the sexual advances he made towards her. Weinstein’s statement said he “did not recall pressuring Salma to do a gratuitous sex scene with a female co-star and he was not there for the filming.” The statement reads: “However, that was part of the story, as Frida Kahlo was bisexual and the more significant sex scene in the movie was choreographed by Ms Hayek with Geoffrey Rush.”
“All of the sexual allegations as portrayed by [Hayek] are not accurate and others who witnessed the events have a different account of what transpired,” it continued. According to the statement, Weinstein “regards Salma Hayek as a first-class actress” and acknowledges that “there was creative friction” on the set of Frida.
