Rose McGowan slammed a guest column published by the director Alexander Payne in which he denied McGowan’s account of statutory rape, calling his response a “lie” and “propaganda.”
“I told Payne to acknowledge and apologize, he has not. I said I didn’t want to destroy, now I do. Why do these men always lie? I will now make it a mission to expose him. I am not the only one,” McGowan told Variety. “F— him and his lies is my comment.”
The actress and activist came forward last month to accuse the director of statutory rape and grooming her by showing her a soft-core porn movie when she was 15 years old. In the guest column published on Friday, Payne denied meeting McGowan at the time she said the incident took place and said he had never made a softcore porn movie for Showtime, as she has said.
“Rose is mistaken in saying we met when she was fifteen, in the late 1980s. I was a full-time film student at UCLA from 1984 until 1990, and I know that our paths never crossed,” Payne wrote. “She claims that I showed her a ‘soft-core porn movie’ I had directed for Showtime ‘under a different name.’ This would have been impossible, since I had never directed anything professionally, lurid or otherwise. I have also never worked for Showtime or directed under any name other than my own.”
But in her response to Variety, McGowan said “men like Predator Payne … must be stopped.”
“I want people that have watched his films to know his morals are in your mind, his thoughts have become yours. Like in his ‘comedy’ ‘Election,’ where the middle-aged teacher that fantasizes having sex with his young student, Reese Witherspoon. I want people to know Hollywood perpetrators show you who they are, their skewed view normalized. Men like Predator Payne, who profited from working Weinstein, must be stopped from not only assaulting, but must also be prevented from infecting the masses with their propaganda,” she said.
A representative for McGowan did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment. But late Friday the actress added to her comments in a statement on Twitter. See it below:
https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/1302090932150439946