Tom Hanks on Harvey Weinstein: ‘There Were People Who Knew Exactly What was Going On’

Hollywood veteran Tom Hanks addressed the Harvey Weinstein sex assault scandal this week in an interview with NPR’s David Greene, saying those “who knew” what the disgraced movie producer was doing to young women have to ask themselves some hard questions.

Asked if he or Hollywood were complicit in enabling the rampant sexual harassment in Weinstein’s orbit, Hanks said, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he didn’t feel responsible for it but is “sure there were people who knew exactly what was going on.”

And those people who knew about the abuse have to ask themselves: “Did you aid it? Did you abet it? Did you warn people against it?”

Hanks, who’s promoting his new book, Uncommon Type, said powerful men in Hollywood who prey on women “think, somehow, this is how it works. ‘Don’t you understand, this is how it works, I’m your boss and you will have to please me.'”

Though myriad women have come forward and accused Weinstein, filmmaker James Toback, and several others of sexual assault, the two-time Oscar-winner said sexual harassment exists in every industry and won’t ever go away.

“I think those days are close to [over] — I don’t know if they’ll ever be over,” Hanks said, adding that men being polite to women is acceptable and “you can be a jerk and an asshole in a lot of ways, but you can’t be a sexual predator.”

When the Weinstein allegations first broke, the Sully star said: “isn’t it kind of amazing that it took this long?”

“Look, I don’t want to rag on Harvey but so obviously something went down there. You can’t buy, ‘Oh, well, I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s and so therefore …’ I did, too,'” Hanks told the New York Times.

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson