Rose McGowan, the actress whose rape allegations against Harvey Weinstein triggered a wave of accusations against the producer one year ago, has condemned Hollywood figures who publicly support the #MeToo movement but have failed to offer solidarity to victims such as herself, in an incendiary interview with the U.K.’s Sunday Times magazine.
“I just think they’re douchebags,” the actress says, “They’re not champions. I just think they’re losers. I don’t like them. How do I explain the fact that I got a GQ Man of the Year award and no women’s magazines and no women’s organisations have supported me?”
In an accompanying video McGowan makes it clear she does not disown or belittle the movement itself, saying #MeToo will “keep going forward because you can't put the genie back in the bottle.”
McGowan issued a clarifying tweet last night to reinforce that point.
But writer Decca Aitkenhead quotes McGowan as saying of campaign lunches and ‘survivors’ brunches’: “It’s all bullshit. It’s a lie. It’s a Band-Aid lie to make them feel better. I know these people, I know they’re lily-livered, and as long as it looks good on the surface, to them, that’s enough.”
She also says that her worst moment came when she was arrested for cocaine possession. She claims she was framed by operatives hired by Weinstein and the case has yet to go to trial.
She says “having handcuffs on me before my rapist did” made her want to sink to her knees, “and scream and scream, but I knew if I started I wouldn’t stop.” She says her enemies, (and it has been shown that Weinstein hired ex-Mossad agents to try and discredit McGowan and steal a manuscript of her book) are “trying to drive me to the brink of sanity and over it. I will not let that happen.”
McGowan invokes the wisdom of Donald Trump supporters in the Sunday Times interview, saying “they hate Hollywood for being faux liberals—and they’re 100% right about that. It’s a bunch of faux liberals. It’s crap, and they know it is deep down, but they’re living an empty life, and to me that’s their punishment. They get to live the lives they live.”
McGowan also attacks one of Weinstein’s most famous female champions in the interview, saying the notion that Meryl Streep knew nothing of Weinstein’s behaviour is “literally impossible.”
Previously, Streep has said: “I want to let [McGowan] know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the ’90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others. I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know.”
McGowan also says that Weinstein’s wife, Georgina Chapman’s claims to have been similarly clueless also are not credible, saying, “American Vogue is disgusting. They should be embarrassed and they should be ashamed.”
McGowan dismisses the argument that #MeToo is killing the fun of flirtation, telling the Sunday Times, “How much fun have you had, ladies? How much fun have you actually had? I don’t categorize it as fun, I categorize it as humiliation and theft. They’ve sold themselves a fiction, because it’s easier to live that way. I think a lot of them would have to face up to something, and they can’t, because they’ve got no place to put it.”
She also dismisses the question of forgiveness for perpetrators, saying, “Fuck it. Fuck your forgiveness. No moving on, not if they’re still doing it... It’s expected of us to be feminine and gracious, but they haven’t been gracious with us. Forgiveness? Maybe when I’m 80. If I feel like it.”
She adds that if Weinstein got, “Life in prison for all the lives he stole… maybe then I’ll have forgiveness, but not until then.”
McGowan launched a searing attack on the self-help guru Tony Robbins who was forced to deny “knocking the #MeToo movement” after telling a live audience in a talk about ‘victimhood’ that “anger is not empowerment.”
“Well, Tony, why don’t you bend over and take it up the ass, and then you can tell me about your victimhood, OK? When someone does that without asking. Why don’t you tell me about victimhood, because you are a very rich white male, and I suspect you have never had victimhood, not in that way.”
The piece does not include McGowan comment on her public feud with Asia Argento; the interview took place before McGowan apologized to Argento for publicly criticizing her over sexual assault allegations, but after Argento threatened to sue McGowan.