PITCH PERFECT STAR Rebel Wilson opened up about her own experience with sexual harassment on Twitter last night.
The 37-year-old Australian began by saying that she has been in a ‘bubble’ of sorts abroad, and hasn’t been able to keep up with all of the news properly as she’s working on new comedy.
She then went on to say that a male star in a position of power attempted to humiliate her.
[The unnamed man] asked me to go into a room with him and then asked me repeatedly to stick my finger up his ass. All whilst his male ‘friends’ tried to film the incident on their iPhones and laughed. I repeatedly said no and eventually got out of the room.
She called her agent and complained to the studio to insure herself for potential future events.
After this, she says she was “threatened by one of the star’s representatives to be nice and support the male star”. She refused to do so and says “the whole thing was disgusting.” She has also warned hundreds of people in the industry about this individual by sharing her story.
She then went on to talk about how she was invited to a hotel room with a top director, which she believed would be relating to work. While she was in the hotel room, she overheard a phone call from the director’s wife ‘abusing him’ for sleeping with actresses – which she took as her cue to leave.
She also wrote that she feels lucky to have grown up in a “pro-female environment, going to an all-girls high school” and that she has a strong sense of self and has taken self-defence classes, which made her able to escape both incidents and she realises not everyone is so lucky.
She ended her statement with one final message:
She will “no longer be polite” if she encounters any harassment, towards herself or anybody that she knows.”
In the same week, several celebrities were accused of sexual harassment or assault.
- Brand New vocalist Jesse Lacey released a statement after photos emerged revealing that he had been grooming teenage fans online, asking them for nude photographs and masturbating in front of young teenagers on Skype. In his statement Lacey (who studied child psychology in college – which makes these allegations seem worse on so many levels) blamed a ‘sex addiction‘ for his behaviour.
- Star Trek’s George Takei says he is “shocked and bewildered” by allegations that in 1981 he stripped and groped a former model who passed out drunk after two drinks in his apartment. Takei says he has wracked his brain but does not remember ever encountering the man who made the allegations and finds it personally painful that he could be accused of these actions. A week earlier, in a radio interview with Howard Stern he admitted to groping someone who may not have necessarily consented.
- Louis CK released a statement after allegations that he had exposed himself to numerous women over several decades emerged. The comedian admitted everything and wrote that “there is nothing about this” that he forgives himself for, but managed to go his entire statement without using the word ‘sorry’.
- And a second woman spoke out earlier this week about Gossip Girl Actor Ed Westwick, recounting an alleged rape that occurred in 2014. The actor denies allegations, calling them “disheartening and sad”.
- Writer Richard Dreyfuss spoke out about how proud he was of his son Harry shared his story about being groped by Kevin Spacey. Dreyfuss was applauded for defending his son. Allegations have since been made about Richard by LA writer Jessica Teich, who says she was harassed by this man ‘for months’. “He was in a position of so much power over me, and I didn’t feel I could tell anyone about it.” She says the harassment was constant over a two-to three-year period, which culminated in an incident where he allegedly exposed himself to her.
