Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o has spoken out about the “conspiracy of silence” surrounding film producer Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults.
, the 34-year-old, who won an Academy Award for her role in 12 Years a Slave in 2014, says she first encountered Weinstein while she was still a student at the Yale School of Drama in Connecticut.
As she was making her name in Hollywood, Nyong'o claims Weinstein invited her to his home to see a film screening there. His young children were in the screening room, she says, and he asked her to leave about 15 minutes in, to show her something.
She was led into his bedroom where he allegedly told her he wanted to give her a massage.
"I began to massage his back to buy myself time to figure out how to extricate myself from this undesirable situation. Before long he said he wanted to take off his pants.
"I told him not to do that and informed him that it would make me extremely uncomfortable. He got up anyway to do so and I headed for the door. [...] The potential witnesses, were all (strategically, it seems to me now) in a soundproof room."
On another occasion, she says, he propositioned her when they were out for a meal.
“He announced: ‘Let’s cut to the chase. I have a private room upstairs where we can have the rest of our meal.’ I was stunned. I told him I preferred to eat in the restaurant,” she writes.
“He told me not to be so naïve. If I wanted to be an actress, then I had to be willing to do this sort of thing. He said he had dated Famous Actress X and Y and look where that had gotten them.”
'I did not know I had allies'
She said Weinstein’s behaviour when they were alone made her feel “unsafe” and she vowed never to work with him again.
“I was entering into a community that Harvey Weinstein had been in, and even shaped, long before I got there. He was one of the first people I met in the industry, and he told me, ‘This is the way it is,’” she writes.
“And wherever I looked, everyone seemed to be bracing themselves and dealing with him, unchallenged. I did not know that things could change. I did not know that anybody wanted things to change. So my survival plan was to avoid Harvey and men like him at all costs, and I did not know that I had allies in this.
“I wish I had known that there were ears to hear me. That justice could be served. There is clearly power in numbers. I thank the women who have spoken up and given me the strength to revisit this unfortunate moment in my past.
“I had shelved my experience with Harvey far in the recesses of my mind, joining in the conspiracy of silence that has allowed this predator to prowl for so many years. […] But now that this is being discussed openly, I have not been able to avoid the memories resurfacing.
“I have felt sick in the pit of my stomach. I have felt such a flare of rage that the experience […] was not a unique incident with me, but rather part of a sinister pattern of behaviour.”
Nyong'o joins a number of prolific Hollywood actresses who have made sexual assault and harassment allegations against Weinstein, including Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie. Around 40 women have spoken out about of incidents involving Weinstein and spanning decades.
The 65-year-old producer resigned from the board of The Weinstein Company this week, having already been sacked as its co-chairman.
'I knew enough'
Award-winning filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has admitted knowing for decades about Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual misconduct.
Tarantino said that he had heard about Weinstein's behaviour long before investigations by that paper and the New Yorker which prompted a flood of further allegations.
He confessed in an interview published on Thursday to feeling ashamed that he did not stop working with the mogul.
"I knew enough to do more than I did," the Oscar-winning filmmaker told the New York Times, citing several episodes involving prominent actresses.
"There was more to it than just the normal rumours, the normal gossip. It wasn't second-hand. I knew he did a couple of these things."
Los Angeles police confirmed on Thursday that they are investigating Weinstein over an alleged sex attack that took place in 2013, the sixth such allegation against the producer.
Dismissed incidents
Tarantino's ex-girlfriend Mira Sorvino told him Weinstein had made unwanted advances while another actress made similar allegations years later, according to the Times.
"What I did was marginalise the incidents," Tarantino said, admitting that he had dismissed them as mild misbehaviour.
"Anything I say now will sound like a crappy excuse," added the filmmaker, who won best screenplay Oscars for black comedy western 'Django Unchained' in 2013 and cult favorite 'Pulp Fiction' in 1995.
Weinstein and Tarantino have worked closely for decades since the producer distributed 'Reservoir Dogs' in 1992. The pair also collaborated on 'Pulp Fiction', the 'Kill Bill' films, 'Inglourious Basterds' and 'The Hateful Eight'.
