Lupita Nyong’o is the latest actress to come forward with a creepy story about Harvey Weinstein, sharing her alleged experience in a piece she penned for the New York Times.
In the article, the “12 Years a Slave” Oscar-winner writes that hearing the stories of fellow actresses such as Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow made her take a look at her own experience with Weinstein, bringing about the realization that what allegedly happened to her was part of a “sinister pattern of behaviour” that made her feel “sick in the pit of my stomach.”
According to Nyong’o, she first met Weinstein at the Berlin Film Festival when she was a Yale drama student, when Weinstein invited her to dinner. After their first meeting, she writes, “he didn’t quite put me at ease, but he didn’t alarm me, either.”
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That changed when Weinstein invited her to his home in Connecticut, where she watched a movie with Weinstein and his young children.
Before the movie ended, Weinstein insisted that Nyong’o follow him to another part of the house, despite her protests that she wanted to watch the rest of the film.
“Harvey led me into a bedroom — his bedroom — and announced that he wanted to give me a massage,” she writes. “I thought he was joking at first. He was not. For the first time since I met him, I felt unsafe.”
Thinking on her feet, she managed to turn the tables. “I panicked a little and thought quickly to offer to give him one instead: It would allow me to be in control physically, to know exactly where his hands were at all times.”
She continues: “I began to massage his back to buy myself time to figure out how to extricate myself from this undesirable situation. Before long he said he wanted to take off his pants. I told him not to do that and informed him that it would make me extremely uncomfortable. He got up anyway to do so and I headed for the door, saying that I was not at all comfortable with that.”
A few months later, she agreed to have dinner with Weinstein, who laid it on the line. “If I wanted to be an actress, then I had to be willing to do this sort of thing,” she writes. “He said he had dated Famous Actress X and Y and look where that had gotten them.”
According to Nyong’o, Weinstein told her, “You have no idea what you are passing up.” She replied: “With all due respect, I would not be able to sleep at night if I did what you are asking, so I must pass.”
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After she won the Oscar in 2014 for “12 Years a Slave”, she says Weinstein continued to pursue her, offering her roles in various Weinstein Company films — all of which she turned down.
“I had shelved my experience with Harvey far in the recesses of my mind, joining in the conspiracy of silence that has allowed this predator to prowl for so many years,” she writes, explaining why she’s only now coming forward to share her story. “I had felt very much alone when these things happened, and I had blamed myself for a lot of it, quite like many of the other women who have shared their stories.”
After the piece’s publication, a spokesperson for Weinstein issued the following statement: “Mr. Weinstein has a different recollection of the events, but believes Lupita is a brilliant actress and a major force for the industry. Last year, she sent a personal invitation to Mr. Weinstein to see her in her Broadway show ‘Eclipsed’.”
Meanwhile, Nyong’o’s story is taking the Twitterverse by storm, with Nyong’o’s angry fans expressing their outrage.
