When the allegations first broke about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s “open secret” legacy of sexual harassment and assault, Meryl Streep, who worked with Weinstein on “August: Osage County” and “The Iron Lady,” claimed ignorance of his behavior.
“Not everybody knew,” said Streep. “Harvey supported the work fiercely, was exasperating but respectful with me in our working relationship, and with many others with whom he worked professionally. I didn’t know about these other offenses.”
Streep made the statement amid backlash for her public support of Weinstein in the past, including praising the alleged sexual predator as “God.” Since then, Streep has faced very little pressure in the media. Reporters have yet to press her on how she could have possibly been so ignorant when Weinstein’s behavior was such an “open secret” that Seth MacFarlane could crack jokes about it amid celebrity laughter. As screenwriter Scott Rosenberg succinctly put it: “everybody f–cking knew.” Quentin Tarantino was honest enough to admit it. Even Matt Damon and Ben Affleck admitted it, at least partially — but only after their initial denials were shot full of holes.
One celebrity, however, is having none of the false claims of ignorance and has taken Streep to task: actress Rose McGowan. Over the weekend, as reports surfaced that actresses like Streep would be wearing all black at the Golden Globe awards in honor of #MeToo, McGowan blasted the celebrated actress on Twitter.
“Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @GoldenGlobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa,” McGowan wrote Saturday in a now-deleted tweet.
Her “Marchesa” comment was in reference to Weinstein’s now-estranged wife Georgina Chapman’s fashion line.
With her name again making headlines, Streep could no longer remain silent and issued a full response to McGowan through her publicist. Once again, Streep claimed total denial. Her full statement below:
It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others.
I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know. I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening.
I don’t know where Harvey lives, nor has he ever been to my home.
I have never in my life been invited to his hotel room.
I have been to his office once, for a meeting with Wes Craven for “Music of the Heart” in 1998.
HW distributed movies I made with other people.
HW was not a filmmaker; he was often a producer, primarily a marketer of films made by other people- some of them great, some not great. But not every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW distributed knew he abused women, or that he raped Rose in the 90s, other women before and others after, until they told us. We did not know that women’s silence was purchased by him and his enablers.
HW needed us not to know this, because our association with him bought him credibility, an ability to lure young, aspiring women into circumstances where they would be hurt.
He needed me much more than I needed him and he made sure I didn’t know. Apparently he hired ex Mossad operators to protect this information from becoming public. Rose and the scores of other victims of these powerful, moneyed, ruthless men face an adversary for whom Winning, at any and all costs, is the only acceptable outcome. That’s why a legal defense fund for victims is currently being assembled to which hundreds of good hearted people in our business will contribute, to bring down the bastards, and help victims fight this scourge within.
Rose assumed and broadcast something untrue about me, and I wanted to let her know the truth. Through friends who know her, I got my home phone number to her the minute I read the headlines. I sat by that phone all day yesterday and this morning, hoping to express both my deep respect for her and others’ bravery in exposing the monsters among us, and my sympathy for the untold, ongoing pain she suffers. No one can bring back what entitled bosses like Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, and HW took from the women who endured attacks on their bodies and their ability to make a living. And I hoped that she would give me a hearing. She did not, but I hope she reads this.
I am truly sorry she sees me as an adversary, because we are both, together with all the women in our business, standing in defiance of the same implacable foe: a status quo that wants so badly to return to the bad old days, the old ways where women were used, abused and refused entry into the decision-making, top levels of the industry. That’s where the cover-ups convene. Those rooms must be disinfected, and integrated, before anything even begins to change.
Streep earned yet another Golden Globe nomination for her role in Spielberg’s “The Post” this year.