Harvey Weinstein sexual assault accuser Rose McGowan said she felt detached from her body during her fateful 1997 encounter with the now-disgraced indie mogul.
“You float up above your body because you’re trying to figure out — my brain was actually literally when he grabbed me I was thinking, ‘Oh, I hope I still have lipstick on for the camera,’ so your brain is in another place and all of a sudden your body is like ‘what, what, what’ and this is not what I expected at 10 in the morning,” the actress told Robin Roberts on “Good Morning America” Tuesday to promote her new book “Brave.”
McGowan said she was sexually assaulted by the mogul in his hotel room in Park City, Utah, during 1997’s Sundance Film Festival. Although she describes the incident in detail in the book, she never mentions Weinstein’s name, which she said on “GMA” is because it’s “an ugly name.”
McGowan explained she was being following by an MTV camera crew that day for a “day in the life” segment. She also said that it wasn’t that uncommon to meet in hotel rooms, because men of that level would often rent out full suites with multiple offices in them.
McGowan also said that Weinstein shouldn’t solely be held accountable for his actions, and that there were “handlers” set up in every country he visited.
“For me he’s a sick person. He’s a sick mind, but what about all the others?” she said. “There were so many. The machinery set up in every country he would go to. For the handlers to hand him the victims, from starting with the agents and managers…. When I say it’s a complicity machine, it is.”
In October, McGowan wrote that Weinstein raped her on Twitter after she was named in an explosive New York Times story along with other women who alleged the movie mogul committed sexual assault. She has since been a voice of resistance for the #MeToo movement. Weinstein has denied all allegations of criminal wrongdoing.
The New York Times later reported that Weinstein paid Gowan a $100,000 settlement to keep quiet about the 1997 allegations.
On “GMA,” the former “Charmed” actress said she attempted to use the money to buy a billboard: “It was my only way of saying, ‘I didn’t like this. I didn’t want this.’ It was my only form of voice.”
Watch McGowan’s interview below.
.@rosemcgowan on Harvey Weinstein, who she calls "The Monster": "For me he's a sick person, he's a sick mind, but what about all the others? And there were so many. The machinery set up in every country he would go to for the handlers to hand him the victims." pic.twitter.com/QTMHkInKvP
— Good Morning America (@GMA) January 30, 2018