Harvey Weinstein wanted to get Aishwarya Rai ‘alone in a room’ in 2003
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I had been wondering, at various moments in the past two weeks, if Harvey Weinstein only preyed on white actresses. Many predators have a “type,” a physical type, and judging his type from the women who came forward, the only victimology profile I can come up with if “younger than 40 and white.” He likes blondes, redheads, brunettes – he’s an equal opportunity assailant. I wondered (idly) if any women of color were going to come forward at any point. Well, I’m sorry I even wondered. Apparently, he came close to assaulting a Vietnamese actress, and he tried to get Aishwarya Rai alone in a room. First, the Rai story:
Harvey Weinstein creepily set his sights on top Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, asking her manager, “What do I have to do to get her alone?” Simone Sheffield, the founding CEO of Canyon Entertainment and Bachchan’s then-international manager, said she refused to let her client be alone with the pervy producer for even one second during a meeting in the 2000s at his New York office.
“Kiss my black ass,” Sheffield said in response to Weinstein’s come-on, she recalled to Hindustan Times. The loyal manager believed there were efforts to get her to leave the room, so that the powerful movie producer could meet with Bachchan alone – but she refused to budge.
“She was 100 percent protected,” Sheffield said, “and I would not let him even breathe in her direction.” At the time, Bachchan was set to start filming “Bride and Prejudice,” a movie Weinstein’s company Miramax owned the distribution rights to in the United States. Weinstein allegedly made the bold request to “get her alone” as the actress and Sheffield were leaving the meeting, which took place in 2003 or 2004. Sheffield was so offended, she claimed, she sent Weinstein – whom she called the “fat f—king pig that he was” — a trough of Diet Coke as a snide thank-you gift. Weinstein’s office, though, “missed the irony,” Sheffield said, and thanked her in earnest for the soda.
[From Page Six]
“Kiss my black ass” is an amazing retort. Simone Sheffield for president!! Ugh, the fact that Harvey Weinstein said that to Aishwarya’s MANAGER says a lot though. It’s what many critics have said about the whole “we didn’t know” brigade – many behind-the-scenes people knew parts of it. The agents, the managers, the publicists – they had some idea.
As for the other victim – her name is Vu Thu Phuong and this sounds horrifying:
A Vietnamese actress claims Harvey Weinstein personally tried to “teach” her how to film sex scenes — while wearing nothing but a towel. The young woman described the skin-crawling encounter in a lengthy Facebook post, saying it happened in China in 2008, not long after she had one of her movie roles reduced to almost nothing. Weinstein had been meeting with her to discuss a new film contract with a more prominent part.
“I sat there waiting [for him] alone with a heavy heart because I didn’t know what the new movie would be like,” recalled Vu Thu Phuong, who was also a model at the time. “Everything suddenly turned dark when I saw Mr. Harvey Weinstein standing before me with only a towel around his waist, smiling,” she said, according to Saigoneer. Weinstein went on to ask if Phuong wanted to star in a few sex scenes, insisting that there would be some in the new movie.
“I can teach you, don’t worry. Many stars have also been through this,” she remembered him telling her. “Just treat this as necessary experiences so that you’ll have a stronger foundation in the future.”
Phuong said she refused Weinstein’s advances, informing him that “it wouldn’t be a good thing if someone were to find out.”
“I was thinking at the moment that if he were to rape me or kill me, would anybody find out and stop him?” she wrote on Facebook. “It was an extremely horrifying feeling. My head was tensing up. It felt like my nerves would snap.”
Weinstein had promised to give Phuong a supporting role in the 2010 neo-noir thriller “Shanghai” — starring John Cusack and Chinese actress Gong Li — but he apparently made drastic cuts to the film, which downgraded her performance.
“I tried and tried to find myself on the screen, and I cried when I saw myself in a blink [in the movie],” she said. “It’s too underwhelming, too disappointing. Why were my scenes omitted so much?”
[From Page Six]
How many young actresses did this happen to? How many young actresses had their hopes dashed and their careers destroyed before they even got the chance to have a career? The way he approached this young woman just feels so… practiced. That’s what I keep thinking about, especially in the stories from the late ‘90s and early ‘00s: he was already so practiced at this. He had been doing it for so long.
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Photos courtesy of Getty.
Source: Harvey Weinstein wanted to get Aishwarya Rai ‘alone in a room’ in 2003
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