Rose McGowan Says Harvey Weinstein's Camp Offered Her $1 Million in Exchange for Signing NDA
In Rose McGowan's latest interview, the actress claimed she was offered $1 million by a representative of Harvey Weinstein to convince her not to speak about her 1997 sexual abuse complaint and settlement against the film producer.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, the "Charmed" actress claimed that "someone close to" Weinstein approached her camp to offer her $1 million, but in return, she would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement that would have prevented her from publicly speaking about her $100,000 settlement with the Miramax co-founder in 1997.
The report added that McGowan discovered just last summer that the 1997 settlement case against Weinstein did not come with a confidentiality agreement.
As a response, McGowan told the New York Times that she countered the offer and initially asked for $6 million. "I figured I could probably have gotten him up to three," McGowan told the publication. "But I was like — ew, gross, you're disgusting, I don't want your money, that would make me feel disgusting."
The counteroffer was then withdrawn by the actress and her lawyer "within a day" before the first reports from the New York Times and the New Yorker came out which chronicled sexual harassment allegations against Weinstein supported by accounts from the victims.
The said settlement proceedings occurred following McGowan's claims that she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein in a private hotel suite in 1997 during the Sundance Film Festival.
McGowan was then promoting her movie "Going All the Way." Before going to a press conference, the actress recalled her manager at the time, Jill Messick, telling her that Weinstein had requested for a meeting. However, instead of going to a restaurant as she was initially told, she was led to Weinstein's private suite where the "hotel room encounter" allegedly happened.
Messick's assistant at the time, Anne Woodward, remembered how much McGowan wanted to pursue the case and "did not want to settle." "She wanted to fight," Woodward told the New York Times.
On the other hand, Weinstein representative Sallie Hofmeister responded to the allegations and said: "Mr. Weinstein unequivocally denies any allegations of nonconsensual sex."
A few weeks since the sexual harassment reports were released, Weinstein's former assistant, Zelda Perkins, publicly spoke and detailed how the producer's lawyers settled her and another female colleague's sexual harassment lawsuit.
Perkins told the Financial Times that she and another female colleague had sued Weinstein in 1998. However, like McGowan, they were told even by their legal counsel to just settle the case. The women were later on given 250,000 British pounds, which they shared, but they were required to sign an NDA.
