Another actress has accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual impropriety, alleging that the film mogul offered her an acting role in exchange for a “threesome” with his assistant.
Dawn Dunning accused Weinstein of propositioning her with a sexual overture — in 2003 when she was 24 years old — in exchange for an acting role in films he had slated for production.
Dunning made her accusation in an interview with NBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, describing the scene at a hotel room with Weinstein and his assistant:
I get to the [hotel] room and he opens the door, and he has an open bathrobe on, and there’s this coffee table with all these papers, and we had been talking about his next films and, you know, some roles that he had for me in these films, and so he said, “I have contracts for my next three films, here, and I will sign them today, but I want you to have a threesome with me and my assistant.”
And so, I laughed. Obviously he must be joking, right? He started yelling at me, so at that point I fled from the room. I was scared at that point because he is a very domineering man; a very large, domineering man; very loud.
“It just really turned me off from the whole industry,” said Dunning, framing her experience with Weinstein as prompting her to exit a potential film career. “I just didn’t want to be a part of a business that works that way.”
Dunning suspects The Weinstein Company’s board as being aware of what she described as a pattern of Weinstein’s sexual misconduct. Partial transcript below.
RUHLE: When you learn that The Weinstein Company board says they’re appalled, they’re disgusted, they had no idea; do you believe it?
DUNNING: No, I don’t believe it, and in fact, in all of my dealings with The Weinstein Company, I feel like it was looked at as something that was very accepted and normal.
Watch Dunning’s accusation below:
“You’ll never make it in this business,” said Weinstein to Dunning, according to her allegations to The New York Times.
On Tuesday, NBC’s Ronan Farrow described NBC executives as unwilling to run a story detailing allegations from various women regarding Weinstein’s sexual impropriety. He subsequently brought his story to The New Yorker for publication.
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