Georgina Chapman, the wife of disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein, has spoken for the first time since Weinstein was accused of rape, sexual assault and harassment by over 50 women, many of whom famous Hollywood actresses.
The Marchesa designer quickly left her husband and the father of her two children following the allegations, revealing that after the explosive New York Times piece was released she didn’t go out in public for five months. The damning information took “about two days” to process.
“My head was spinning. And it was difficult because the first article was about a time long before I’d ever met him, so there was a minute where I couldn’t make an informed decision,” she told Vogue US.
“And then the stories expanded and I realised that this wasn’t an isolated incident. And I knew that I needed to step away and take the kids out of here.”
“There was a part of me that was terribly naive – clearly, so naive,” she continued. “I have moments of rage, I have moments of confusion, I have moments of disbelief! And I have moments when I just cry for my children. What are their lives going to be? What are people going to say to them? It’s like, they love their dad. They love him. I just can’t bear it for them.”
In the days that followed, as more and more allegations and detailed stories continued surfacing, Chapman says she was “so humiliated and so broken.”
She hid at a friend’s house, before taking refuge at her parents in London. “I didn’t think it was respectful to go out … I thought, ‘Who am I to be parading around with all of this going on?’ It’s still so very, very raw. I was walking up the stairs the other day and I stopped; it was like all the air had been punched out of my lungs.”
Despite many saying “everyone knew,” Chapman said she was blindsided by the allegations. “That’s what makes this so incredibly painful: I had what I thought was a very happy marriage. I loved my life.”
The mother-of-two also said she still feels there’s a duality to the man she was married to for 10 years.
“Well, he’s a wonderful father to my kids,” she said. “But initially? He’s charismatic. He’s an incredibly bright, very learned man. And very charitable. He paid for a friend of mine’s mother, who had breast cancer, to go to a top doctor. He was amazing like that. He is amazing like that. That is the tough part of this … this black-and-white thing … life isn’t like that. … He was a wonderful partner to me. He was a friend and a confidant and a supporter.”
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