Actress Rose McGowan turned down a million-dollar settlement offer to remain quiet just before the New York Times broke a story this month on decades of allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse by producer Harvey Weinstein, according to a report.
According to the New York Times, McGowan — who alleges that Weinstein raped her at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah in 1997 — was approached through her lawyer with an offer of $1 million, if she would sign a nondisclosure agreement and refuse to talk about the alleged incident.
A few days later, the Times published a bombshell report detailing decades of claims against Weinstein, and reporting that he had reached financial settlements with at least eight women over alleged sexual misconduct. McGowan was reported to have received a $100,000 settlement from Weinstein, but declined to comment for the initial story.
But in the days following the initial report, McGowan became one of the most vocal figures in Hollywood to lead the charge against the industry’s apparent widespread mistreatment of women. McGowan publicly called out actor Ben Affleck for alleged incidents of groping (Affleck later apologized on Twitter to one of the women), and slammed Amazon chief Jeff Bezos for “funding rapists, alleged pedos, and sexual harassers.”
In a New York Times profile on McGowan published Saturday, the actress said she made a counter-offer (“part counteroffer, part slow torture of her former tormentor,” as the paper described it) for her silence, one that she knew the producer was unlikely to pay: $6 million. But she reportedly instructed her attorney to rescind the offer just before the initial Times story broke.
“I figured I could probably have gotten him up to three,” she told the paper. “But I was like — ew, gross, you’re disgusting, I don’t want your money, that would make me feel disgusting.”
According to the latest Times report, McGowan also did not want to settle following the alleged incident with Weinstein.
The Times reported:
But in the months to come, Ms. McGowan did not feel supported by her management team. She was referred to a lawyer specializing in sexual harassment and assault cases who, Ms. McGowan said, gave her the impression that filing a criminal charge was hopeless. “She was like, ‘You’re an actress, you’ve done a sex scene, you’re done,’” she recalled.
Anne Woodward, now a manager herself, was a young assistant in Ms. Messick’s office at the time, and was in on many of Ms. Messick’s calls. “I remember that Rose was extremely upset and did not want to settle,” Ms. Woodward said. “She wanted to fight.” No one around her, as Ms. Woodward recalls, supported that instinct. “It was an emotionally shocking way to see a woman being treated,” Ms. Woodward said. “That’s what stuck with me.”
McGowan’s colleagues at the time also told the Times about how the actress changed following the alleged encounter with Weinstein. McGowan began dating shock rocker Marilyn Manson, and was observed by one friend to be far more “protective” of those close to her than she had been before.
“After that assault, a light dimmed,” actress Maddie Corman, who knew McGowan at the time, told the paper. “I remember her souring on the powers that be. And she became very protective of us. It was sometimes cryptic: Keep your guard up.”
McGowan made her first public appearance since the scandal broke at the Women’s Convention in Detroit Friday, telling attendees that the “paradigm must be subverted” and that it is time to “clean house” in Hollywood.
“I want to thank you for being here, for giving me wings during this very difficult time. The triggering has been insane, the monster’s face everywhere – my nightmare,” she said. “But I know I’m not alone, because I’m the same as the girl in the tiny little town who was raped by the football squad and they have full dominance and control over the little town newspaper. There really is no actual difference.”
Read the New York Times‘ latest profile on McGowan here.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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