Kate Beckinsale has claimed she was viciously verbally attacked by Harvey Weinstein when she worked with him in 2001, after the disgraced producer was sentenced to 23 years in prison following his rape conviction.
In a lengthy Instagram post, the actor recounted a disturbing exchange with the mogul following the New York premiere of Weinstein’s film Serendipity, which she starred in. Beckinsale, who wore a white tuxedo to the premiere, claimed Weinstein invited her to his house the following day, where he called her a “stupid fucking c**t” and accused her of “ruining” the event by dressing “like a fucking lesbian”.
“I had no idea what he was talking about and started to shake,” Beckinsale wrote. “He said, ‘If I am throwing a red carpet you get in a tight dress, you shake your ass you shake your tits you do not go down it looking like a fucking lesbian you stupid fucking c**t.’ The shock made me burst into tears.”
The actor said Weinstein had invited her to bring her toddler daughter to his house the morning after the event for a playdate with his little girl, but immediately asked his nanny to take the children to another room when they arrived, then turned on Beckinsale, “Screaming. Livid.”
Beckinsale said the cast had initially refused to attend the premiere, which was held in New York in October 2001, because it fell so soon after the 9/11 attacks. “But Harvey insisted,” she wrote. At his house, she recalled, “I tried to say ‘Harvey, the city is on fire, people are still looking for their relatives none of us even felt the premiere was appropriate much less coming out dressed like it’s a bachelor party.’ She claims he then said, ‘I don’t care – it’s my fucking premiere and if I want pussy on the red carpet that’s what I get.’”
The actor, who swiftly left with her daughter, said the incident was “one of many experiences I had that there was no recourse for, and falls under no felony. But I WAS punished for it, and for other instances where I said no to him for years, insidiously and seeming [sic] irreversibly.”
On Wednesday 11 March Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison in New York, having been convicted of a first-degree criminal sex act and third-degree rape on 24 February. He was acquitted of first degree rape and two charges of predatory sexual assault, and is yet to face separate charges in Los Angeles. His lawyers have said he will appeal the New York conviction.
Beckinsale said learning of his sentence had come as a “huge relief on behalf of all the women he sexually assaulted or raped”. She added: “Having said that, the crimes that are not crimes, the inhumane bullying and sick covert abuse for which there is STILL no recourse no matter who you tell (and I did tell), these too need to go.”
She ended her post with the words, “And Rose, brava”, apparently a reference to the actor Rose McGowan, who was among the high-profile women who publicly accused Weinstein of rape in 2017.