Harvey Weinstein was a passionate cinephile, a risk taker, a patron of talent in film, a loving father and a monster.
For years, he was my monster.
This fall, I was approached by reporters,
through different sources, including my dear friend Ashley Judd, to
speak about an episode in my life that, although painful, I thought I
had made peace with.
I had brainwashed myself into thinking that it
was over and that I had survived; I hid from the responsibility to speak
out with the excuse that enough people were already involved in shining
a light on my monster. I didn’t consider my voice important, nor did I
think it would make a difference.
In reality, I was trying to save myself the
challenge of explaining several things to my loved ones: Why, when I had
casually mentioned that I had been bullied like many others by Harvey,
I had excluded a couple of details. And why, for so many years, we have
been cordial to a man who hurt me so deeply. I had been proud of my
capacity for forgiveness, but the mere fact that I was ashamed to
describe the details of what I had forgiven made me wonder if that
chapter of my life had really been resolved.
When so many women came forward to describe
what Harvey had done to them, I had to confront my cowardice and humbly
accept that my story, as important as it was to me, was nothing but a
drop in an ocean of sorrow and confusion. I felt that by now nobody
would care about my pain — maybe this was an effect of the many times I
was told, especially by Harvey, that I was nobody.
We are finally becoming conscious of a vice
that has been socially accepted and has insulted and humiliated millions
of girls like me, for in every woman there is a girl. I am inspired by
those who had the courage to speak out, especially in a society that
elected a president who has been accused of sexual harassment and
assault by more than a dozen women and whom we have all heard make a
statement about how a man in power can do anything he wants to women.
Well, not anymore.
In the 14 years that I stumbled from schoolgirl
to Mexican soap star to an extra in a few American films to catching a
couple of lucky breaks in “Desperado” and “Fools Rush In,” Harvey
Weinstein had become the wizard of a new wave of cinema that took
original content into the mainstream. At the same time, it was
unimaginable for a Mexican actress to aspire to a place in Hollywood.
And even though I had proven them wrong, I was still a nobody.
One of the forces that gave me the
determination to pursue my career was the story of Frida Kahlo, who in
the golden age of the Mexican muralists would do small intimate
paintings that everybody looked down on. She had the courage to express
herself while disregarding skepticism. My greatest ambition was to tell
her story. It became my mission to portray the life of this
extraordinary artist and to show my native Mexico in a way that combated
stereotypes.
The Weinstein empire, which was then Miramax,
had become synonymous with quality, sophistication and risk taking — a
haven for artists who were complex and defiant. It was everything that
Frida was to me and everything I aspired to be.
I had started a journey to produce the film with a different company, but I fought to get it back to take it to Harvey.
I knew him a little bit through my relationship
with the director Robert Rodriguez and the producer Elizabeth Avellan,
who was then his wife, with whom I had done several films and who had
taken me under their wing. All I knew of Harvey at the time was that he
had a remarkable intellect, he was a loyal friend and a family man.
Knowing what I know now, I wonder if it wasn’t
my friendship with them — and Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney —
that saved me from being raped.
The deal we made initially was that Harvey
would pay for the rights of work I had already developed. As an actress,
I would be paid the minimum Screen Actors Guild scale plus 10 percent.
As a producer, I would receive a credit that would not yet be defined,
but no payment, which was not that rare for a female producer in the
’90s. He also demanded a signed deal for me to do several other films
with Miramax, which I thought would cement my status as a leading lady.
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I did not care about the money; I was so
excited to work with him and that company. In my naïveté, I thought my
dream had come true. He had validated the last 14 years of my life. He
had taken a chance on me — a nobody. He had said yes.
Little did I know it would become my turn to say no.
No to opening the door to him at all hours of
the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would
show up unexpectedly, including one location where I was doing a movie
he wasn’t even involved with.
No to me taking a shower with him.
No to letting him watch me take a shower.
No to letting him give me a massage.
No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage.
No to letting him give me oral sex.
No to my getting naked with another woman.
No, no, no, no, no …
And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage.
Salma Hayek on the set of the film “Frida.”
Susana Gonzalez/Newsmakers
I don’t think he hated anything more than the
word “no.” The absurdity of his demands went from getting a furious call
in the middle of the night asking me to fire my agent for a fight he
was having with him about a different movie with a different client to
physically dragging me out of the opening gala of the Venice Film
Festival, which was in honor of “Frida,” so I could hang out at his
private party with him and some women I thought were models but I was
told later were high-priced prostitutes.
The range of his persuasion tactics went from
sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said
the terrifying words, “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.”
When he was finally convinced that I was not
going to earn the movie the way he had expected, he told me he had
offered my role and my script with my years of research to another
actress.
In his eyes, I was not an artist. I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body.
At that point, I had to resort to using
lawyers, not by pursuing a sexual harassment case, but by claiming “bad
faith,” as I had worked so hard on a movie that he was not intending to
make or sell back to me. I tried to get it out of his company.
He claimed that my name as an actress was not
big enough and that I was incompetent as a producer, but to clear
himself legally, as I understood it, he gave me a list of impossible
tasks with a tight deadline:
1. Get a rewrite of the script, with no additional payment.
2. Raise $10 million to finance the film.
3. Attach an A-list director.
4. Cast four of the smaller roles with prominent actors.
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Much to everyone’s amazement, not least my own,
I delivered, thanks to a phalanx of angels who came to my rescue,
including Edward Norton, who beautifully rewrote the script several
times and appallingly never got credit, and my friend Margaret
Perenchio, a first-time producer, who put up the money. The brilliant
Julie Taymor agreed to direct, and from then on she became my rock. For
the other roles, I recruited my friends Antonio Banderas, Edward Norton
and my dear Ashley Judd. To this day, I don’t know how I convinced
Geoffrey Rush, whom I barely knew at the time.
Now Harvey Weinstein was not only rejected but also about to do a movie he did not want to do.
Ironically, once we started filming, the sexual
harassment stopped but the rage escalated. We paid the price for
standing up to him nearly every day of shooting. Once, in an interview
he said Julie and I were the biggest ball busters he had ever
encountered, which we took as a compliment.
Halfway through shooting, Harvey turned up on
set and complained about Frida’s “unibrow.” He insisted that I eliminate
the limp and berated my performance. Then he asked everyone in the room
to step out except for me. He told me that the only thing I had going
for me was my sex appeal and that there was none of that in this movie.
So he told me he was going to shut down the film because no one would
want to see me in that role.
It
was soul crushing because, I confess, lost in the fog of a sort of
Stockholm syndrome, I wanted him to see me as an artist: not only as a
capable actress but also as somebody who could identify a compelling
story and had the vision to tell it in an original way.
I was hoping he would acknowledge me as a
producer, who on top of delivering his list of demands shepherded the
script and obtained the permits to use the paintings. I had negotiated
with the Mexican government, and with whomever I had to, to get
locations that had never been given to anyone in the past — including
Frida Kahlo’s houses and the murals of Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera,
among others.
But all of this seemed to have no value. The
only thing he noticed was that I was not sexy in the movie. He made me
doubt if I was any good as an actress, but he never succeeded in making
me think that the film was not worth making.
He offered me one option to continue. He would
let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman.
And he demanded full-frontal nudity.
He had been constantly asking for more skin,
for more sex. Once before, Julie Taymor got him to settle for a tango
ending in a kiss instead of the lovemaking scene he wanted us to shoot
between the character Tina Modotti, played by Ashley Judd, and Frida.
But this time, it was clear to me he would
never let me finish this movie without him having his fantasy one way or
another. There was no room for negotiation.
I had to say yes. By now so many years of my
life had gone into this film. We were about five weeks into shooting,
and I had convinced so many talented people to participate. How could I
let their magnificent work go to waste?
I had asked for so many favors, I felt an
immense pressure to deliver and a deep sense of gratitude for all those
who did believe in me and followed me into this madness. So I agreed to
do the senseless scene.
I arrived on the set the day we were to shoot
the scene that I believed would save the movie. And for the first and
last time in my career, I had a nervous breakdown: My body began to
shake uncontrollably, my breath was short and I began to cry and cry,
unable to stop, as if I were throwing up tears.
Since those around me had no knowledge of my
history of Harvey, they were very surprised by my struggle that morning.
It was not because I would be naked with another woman. It was because I
would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein. But I could not tell them
then.
My mind understood that I had to do it, but my
body wouldn’t stop crying and convulsing. At that point, I started
throwing up while a set frozen still waited to shoot. I had to take a
tranquilizer, which eventually stopped the crying but made the vomiting
worse. As you can imagine, this was not sexy, but it was the only way I
could get through the scene.
By the time the filming of the movie was over, I
was so emotionally distraught that I had to distance myself during the
postproduction.
When Harvey saw the cut film, he said it was
not good enough for a theatrical release and that he would send it
straight to video.
This time Julie had to fight him without me and
got him to agree to release the film in one movie theater in New York
if we tested it to an audience and we scored at least an 80.
Less than 10 percent of films achieve that score on a first screening.
I didn’t go to the test. I anxiously awaited to receive the news. The film scored 85.
And
again, I heard Harvey raged. In the lobby of a theater after the
screening, he screamed at Julie. He balled up one of the scorecards and
threw it at her. It bounced off her nose. Her partner, the film’s
composer Elliot Goldenthal, stepped in, and Harvey physically threatened
him.
Once he calmed down, I found the strength to
call Harvey to ask him also to open the movie in a theater in Los
Angeles, which made a total of two theaters. And without much ado, he
gave me that. I have to say sometimes he was kind, fun and witty — and
that was part of the problem: You just never knew which Harvey you were
going to get.
Months later, in October 2002, this film, about
my hero and inspiration — this Mexican artist who never truly got
acknowledged in her time with her limp and her unibrow, this film that
Harvey never wanted to do, gave him a box office success that no one
could have predicted, and despite his lack of support, added six Academy
Award nominations to his collection, including best actress.
Even though “Frida” eventually won him two
Oscars, I still didn’t see any joy. He never offered me a starring role
in a movie again. The films that I was obliged to do under my original
deal with Miramax were all minor supporting roles.
Years later, when I ran into him at an event,
he pulled me aside and told me he had stopped smoking and he had had a
heart attack. He said he’d fallen in love and married Georgina Chapman,
and that he was a changed man. Finally, he said to me: “You did well
with ‘Frida’; we did a beautiful movie.”
I believed him. Harvey would never know how
much those words meant to me. He also would never know how much he hurt
me. I never showed Harvey how terrified I was of him. When I saw him
socially, I’d smile and try to remember the good things about him,
telling myself that I went to war and I won.
But why do so many of us, as female artists,
have to go to war to tell our stories when we have so much to offer? Why
do we have to fight tooth and nail to maintain our dignity?
I think it is because we, as women, have been
devalued artistically to an indecent state, to the point where the film
industry stopped making an effort to find out what female audiences
wanted to see and what stories we wanted to tell.
According to a recent study,
between 2007 and 2016, only 4 percent of directors were female and 80
percent of those got the chance to make only one film. In 2016, another
study found, only 27 percent of words spoken in the biggest movies were
spoken by women. And people wonder why you didn’t hear our voices
sooner. I think the statistics are self-explanatory — our voices are not
welcome.
Until there is equality in our industry, with
men and women having the same value in every aspect of it, our community
will continue to be a fertile ground for predators.
I am grateful for everyone who is listening to
our experiences. I hope that adding my voice to the chorus of those who
are finally speaking out will shed light on why it is so difficult, and
why so many of us have waited so long. Men sexually harassed because
they could. Women are talking today because, in this new era, we finally
can.
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