OVER THE WEEKEND, actress Rose McGowan went after Meryl Streep on Twitter for “working with” Harvey Weinstein for years despite his reputation in Hollywood as being a sexual predator.
In a since-deleted tweet, McGowan wrote:
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 chance. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.
McGowan has since apologised for the line about Marchesa - the brand designed by Weinstein’s wife Georgina Chapman – but didn’t apologise for the criticism aimed at Streep and a group of actresses who plan to wear black to the Golden Globes as a protest against gender inequality.
Last night, in an exclusive statement given to The Huffington Post, Streep responded to McGowan’s accusations at length.
She began:
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.
She was frank in her denial of any knowledge of what was happening:
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.
Speaking about Weinstein directly, she said:
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.
Streep said Rose assumed and broadcast something untrue about her, but reached out for contact when she heard:
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.
She finished with a call for defiance against the status quo in Hollywood:
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.
The line in the statement claiming that Streep had given McGowan her home phone number was tweeted at @rosemcgowan, but Rose seems to have disputed this by simply tweeting this emoji in response:
