CASTING COUCH

Oliver Stone Accused of Sexual Harassment by Melissa Gilbert: ‘I Left Crying’

Pressure is mounting on director Oliver Stone, with another accusation of sexual misconduct—by actress Melissa Gilbert.

Oliver Stone staked out the moral high ground early on in the Harvey Weinstein scandal, saying he would “recuse” himself from Showtime’s upcoming series Guantanamo “as long as the Weinstein Company is involved.”

Stone, who also said Weinstein shouldn’t be tried by a “vigilante system,” was charged with hypocrisy after claims by a Playboy model that he grabbed her breasts during a party, but now there is fresh trouble for Stone after the much-loved actress Melissa Gilbert claimed that he sought to humiliate her by writing a “special scene” for her to perform in an audition for the movie The Doors that required her to beg for sex on her hands and knees.

“He wrote this special scene that he wanted me to do for him physically in the casting room, and it was humiliating and horrid,” Gilbert said in an interview with Sirius XM’s Andy Cohen, adding that she refused to perform the scene and fled the casting room.

“I’d auditioned and then he said, ‘I have this special scene for you, I’d like you to do it with the actor, I want to see the chemistry between the two of you.’ The whole scene was just my character on her hands and knees saying, ‘Do me, baby.’ Really dirty, horrible. Then he said, ‘I’d like you to stage it for me.’ I left crying.”

She told Cohen, “I’m actually sitting here telling you this story, afraid to say his name, because I’m worried about backlash,” before saying, “Oh fuck it! It was Oliver Stone, and it was The Doors.”

Gilbert said the role she was auditioning for was the part of Jim Morrison’s girlfriend, Pamela Courson, a role eventually played by Meg Ryan.

Gilbert said she believes Stone set out to humiliate her because she had “embarrassed him” in a social situation at a nightclub when some fans ditched Stone and approached Gilbert because they were fans of Little House on the Prairie.

“I guess he never forgot about it,” she said.

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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