Lena Headey Accuses Harvey Weinstein of Sexual Harassment: ‘I Felt Completely Powerless’
Zack Sharf
Lena Headey has accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment in a series of four tweets posted to her official Twitter page that detail an encounter with the former head of The Weinstein Company that left the “Game of Thrones” star in tears. Headey first met Weinstein at the Venice Film Festival where she was promoting Terry Gilliam’s “The Brothers Grimm.” Miramax was co-distributor of the movie that also starred Matt Damon and Heath Ledger.
“At one point Harvey asked me to take a walk down to the water, I walked down with him and he stopped and made some suggestive comment, a gesture, I just laughed it off, I was genuinely shocked,” Headey writes. “I remember thinking, ‘It’s got to be a joke.’ I said something like, ‘Oh come on mate?! It’d be like kissing my dad! Let’s go get a drink, get back to the others.’ I was never in any other Miramax film.”
Years later, Weinstein reached out to Headey and requested a meeting in Los Angeles, to which she agreed to thinking “he’d never try anything with [her] again” after she rejected him in Venice. The two met for breakfast and then Weinstein invited her to his hotel room in order to show her a script, according to Headey.
“We walked to the lift and the energy shifted,” Headey explains. “My whole body went into high alert. The lift was going up and I said to Harvey, ‘I’m not interested in anything other than work, please don’t think I got in here with your any other reason, nothing is going to happen.’ I don’t know what possessed me to speak out at that moment, only that I had such a strong sense of ‘don’t come near me.'”
Weinstein was allegedly furious after Headey’s comments. When his hotel key card didn’t work, he escorted Headey back to the lift and allegedly grabbed her arm and held on tightly. Headey says that Weinstein paid for her car home and whispered in her ear, “Don’t tell anyone about this, not your manager, not your agent.” The actress says she got into her car and cried after the encounter.
Headey is the latest actress to speak out against Weinstein over the past two weeks. Over 40 women have now accused the former studio head of sexual harassment or abuse, and the list includes names like Cara Delevingne, Rose McGowan, Angelina Jolie, and Gwyneth Paltrow. The Weinstein scandal has inspired other women to speak out about their own battles against harassment in the industry, including Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Lawrence.
Read Headey’s entire statement in the Twitter thread below.
— lena headey (@IAMLenaHeadey) October 17, 2017
— lena headey (@IAMLenaHeadey) October 17, 2017
— lena headey (@IAMLenaHeadey) October 17, 2017
— lena headey (@IAMLenaHeadey) October 17, 2017
