“The Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra said Harvey Weinstein “shoved me onto the bed” and raped her in the early 1990s.
She told Ronan Farrow in a new piece for The New Yorker that her agent introduced her to Weinstein at a party. Several months later, she approached him about a screenplay a friend of hers had written. Weinstein said he wanted to make the film and for her to star in it, she said. After the film (“The Night We Never Met”) was finished, Sciorra said she became a regular part of “this circle of Miramax.”
One night after an industry dinner, Sciorra said that Weinstein showed up at her home. “I opened the door a crack to see who it was. And he pushed the door open,” she told Farrow. Weinstein walked in “like it was his apartment, like he owned the place, and started unbuttoning his shirt. So it was very clear where he thought this was going to go. And I was in a nightgown. I didn’t have much on.”
“‘You’ve got to go. You have to leave. Get out of my apartment,’” she said she told him. But she said he “shoved me onto the bed, and he got on top of me.” Although she kicked and screamed, she said that he locked her arms over her head and raped her.
“When he was done, he ejaculated on my leg, and on my nightgown,” she said. “And then he attempted to perform oral sex on me. And I struggled, but I had very little strength left in me.”
A representative for Weinstein has stated: “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.”
Sciorra didn’t tell anyone in the months that followed — not friends, family or the police.
“Like most of these women, I was so ashamed of what happened,” she said. “And I fought. I fought. But still I was like, ‘Why did I open that door? Who opens the door at that time of night?’ I was definitely embarrassed by it. I felt disgusting. I felt like I had f—ed up.”
Sciorra told Farrow that she was “still living in fear of [Weinstein], and slept with a baseball bat by her bed.” She said she had been struggling to talk about what happened with Weinstein more than 20 years ago and that he sexually harassed her repeatedly over the many years that followed.
More than 50 women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to rape. Farrow initially reached out to Sciorra in March, but she declined to tell her story.
“I really wanted to tell you. I was like, ‘This is the moment you’ve been waiting for your whole life,’” she told Farrow. “I really, really panicked,” she added. “I was shaking. And I just wanted to get off the phone.”
Although she finally opened up about what she guarded for so long, Sciorra still has concerns about speaking out. “Even now, as I tell you, and have had all these women around saying it’s OK,” Sciorra told Farrow, “I’m petrified again.”