Rose McGowan says Harvey Weinstein was a 'thug' who ruled Hollywood by fear

According to Independent.co, actor and activist Rose McGowan has described disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein as a "mafia boss" and a "thug", saying he exercised immense fear and control in Hollywood.

Speaking on the We Need To Talk podcast, McGowan, 52, who starred in Scream, Jawbreaker and Charmed, said Weinstein was seen as "their god" and was "thanked more times than God at the Oscars", and described witnessing "adult men that were like power players" physically shake in his presence. She said: "I think he was a thug," adding he was "not the mafia boss of the cool kind with a suit like the Marlon Brando Godfather type, but more like a street way." McGowan recounted an alleged assault that she says happened at the Sundance Film Festival, saying she was pulled into "a room with a hot tub", found herself without clothes and "just froze", and that afterward she was left "short circuiting" and became "despondent and angry."

Weinstein was sentenced in 2023 to 16 years in prison for rape and sexual assault in California. He was convicted in 2020 of sexually assaulting Mimi Haleyi and raping Jessica Mann and is serving a 23-year sentence in upstate New York; he has consistently denied all allegations of non-consensual sex. McGowan first accused Weinstein in 2017 and later detailed the alleged 1997 encounter in her 2018 autobiography Brave.

Key Topics

Culture, Rose Mcgowan, Harvey Weinstein, Sundance Film Festival, Brave, Mimi Haleyi