In a new sit-down interview with W magazine, Thandie Newton is opening up about a disturbing incident in which a director grossly overstepped his boundaries.
Echoing the stories of many other actresses in Hollywood, Newton described the traumatic casting call that involved a sexually-charged interaction between an older male executive and herself. “A director, on a callback, had a camera shooting up my skirt and asked me to touch my t**s and think about the guy making love to me in the scene,” Newton recalled. “I thought, ‘OK, this is a little weird,’ but there was a female casting director in the room and I’d done weird stuff before so I did it.”
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With the incident well behind her, the actress didn’t think twice about the awkward day until she ran into an inebriated producer many years later, who told her, “Oh, Thandie, I’ve seen you recently!”
After being confronted by her husband, the star discovered that “the director was showing that audition tape to his friends after poker games at his house…And they would all get off on it.”
Her decision to open up about the matter was motivated by her desire to help other young actresses in the industry. “… One person will read this and it will stop them getting sexually abused by a director,” she explained. “That’s the person I’m interested in.”