Following a number of women coming forward with sexual misconduct and harassment claims against Harvey Weinstein, British writer and author Liza Campbell says the mogul propositioned her years ago in his hotel room after she agreed to discuss a job.
Campbell wrote an essay for the Sunday Times in which she describes a chance introduction with Weinstein in the 1980s that was followed by the pair occasionally crossing paths over the next decade or so.
In 1995, Campbell was struggling as a single mom to two children when she received a call “out of the blue” from Weinstein to work as freelance script-reader for his then-company, Miramax. She said she initially viewed the coveted gig as a “godsend,” but after she was sent a couple scripts, she no longer heard from the company.
“A few months on, another call from Weinstein arrived, asking me how work was going,” Campbell wrote. “I told him everything had stuttered to a halt. He said: ‘You better come to my hotel, and we’ll sort this out.’”
She said she met with the producer in his hotel room a few days later, and that they were initially accompanied by a number of assistants who soon “vanished.” Campbell said that after she spoke to Weinstein for a matter of minutes, he excused himself and left through a door that led to the bathroom.
“I could hear him moving around and suddenly the sound of bath taps running,” she wrote. “‘What do you say we both jump in the bath?’ he hollered. I could hear the thump of shoes being taken off and felt shocked that the meeting had turned sleazy.”
Her essay continued, “My immediate reaction was fury. I’m a mother, a bloody grown-up, not some naive ingenue; what the hell does he take me for? I also felt fear. Harvey Weinstein is huge, a pocked bullock, like a hitman from ‘The Sopranos.’”
According to Campbell, Weinstein continued to proposition her, saying, “Come on, it’ll be fun. We can drink champagne. You can soap me — whaddaya say?”
“What I said very loudly was, ‘If you come back into this room with no clothes on, I’m going to f–ing lose my temper,” she added.
Campbell said she quickly tried to exit through several locked doors before finally finding one that was unlocked.
“It took me days to calm down from the anger I felt and the crushing realization that there never was a job; only a hidden hook,” she wrote. “When you consider the almost identical stories coming out about him now, it seems likely to me that he has been at it for more than 20 years.”
Weinstein settled at least eight allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct over the course of several decades, per an investigation by the New York Times. Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd were among those to come forward with claims in the report by the New York Times. Weinstein has since taken a leave of absence from The Weinstein Company.
A representative for TWC co-founder didn’t immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment, but they told the Sunday Times that “Weinstein will not respond to allegations about private matters in a public forum.”