Game of Thrones star Lena Headey added her name to the growing roster of famous actresses coming forward about their alleged encounters with disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.
In a series of tweets Tuesday, the British actress detailed two instances wherein she says Weinstein sexually harassed her, leading her to ultimately break down in tears while leaving an L.A. hotel.
“The first time I met Harvey Weinstein was at The Venice Film Festival,” she began her statement, noting that she was in town to promote The Brothers Grimm, a 2005 fantasy film directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Matt Damon, the late Heath Ledger and Headey. “At one point Harvey asked me to take a walk down to the water. I walked down with him and he stopped and made some suggestive comment, a gesture, I just laughed it off, I was genuinely shocked, I remember thinking, it’s got to be a joke, I said something like … oh come on mate?! It’d be like kissing my dad!”
Headey added that she suggested the pair return to the festival and grab a drink. She then tucked the incident into the back of her mind, though she pointed out that she was “never in any other Miramax film.” (The Brothers Grimm was co-produced by Dimension Films, a film production company owned by The Weinstein Company.)
“The next time was in LA. Years later,” she continued. “I had always carried the thought that he’d never try anything with me again, not after I’d laughed and said never in a million years. I believed that he respected my boundary and maybe he wanted to talk about potential work.”
The actress said the pair met for breakfast at a hotel where Weinstein was staying, and the conversation started off innocently enough, with the main topic of conversation being “films, film making.” Then, however, Weinstein tried to ask Headey about her love life. “I shifted the conversation back to something less personal,” she wrote.
The mogul next suggested that the pair head up to his room, where he had a script he wanted to show her. This, Headey recounted, was when her senses picked up.
“We walked to the lift and the energy shifted, my whole body went into high alert, the lift was going up and I said to Harvey, I’m not interested in anything other than work, please don’t think I got in here with you for any other reason, nothing is going to happen I said. I don’t know what possessed me to speak out at that moment, only that I had such a strong sense of don’t come near me,” she wrote.
At that, Headey wrote, Weinstein went silent, apparently furious at her words. “His hand was on my back, he was marching me forward, not a word, I felt completely powerless, he tried his key card and it didn’t work, then he got really angry,” she remembered.
Weinstein then walked her back downstairs and paid for a car to take her away from the hotel, whispering in her ear not to tell anyone about the incident. Headey wrote that she burst into tears once she was in the car.
Other Hollywood actresses who have spoken out about their own experiences with Weinstein include Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Rose McGowan and Cara Delevingne.
In a statement to the New Yorker, the second major publication (after the New York Times) to print a detailed expose of several other women’s allegations of sexual assault and harassment, a spokesperson for Weinstein wrote, in part: “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances. Mr. Weinstein obviously can’t speak to anonymous allegations, but with respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr. Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual.”
