Salma Hayek has spoken out again about her harrowing alleged encounters with Harvey Weinstein while working on the 2002 film Frida, saying she “lived in fear”.
Speaking to Oprah Winfrey for her Super Soul Conversation on Wednesday, Hayek explained that she initially declined the opportunity to share her story of Weinstein’s alleged advances with The New York Times.
“[The Times] contacted me to be a part of the first story and already by this contact, there was all this turmoil and I started crying when they asked and I ended up not doing it,” she said, Entertainment Tonight reports.
“I was ashamed I didn’t say anything. But I felt like my pain was so small compared to all the other stories.”
Hayek claimed that during the making of Frida, Weinsten told the film’s director: “I am going to break the kneecaps of that ‘C-word.’”
“[Weinstein] was not the first guy to do this to me. I was really smart around him. I handled it really well,” the actress recounted.
“And maybe that’s why he didn’t rape me.”
Hayek later did speak out about Weinstein’s alleged misconduct in a New York Times op-ed, in which she claimed “for years, he was my monster” but that she had “brainwashed” herself “into thinking that it was over”.
The actress wrote that she was forced to deny the advances of Weinstein on multiple occasions and that the disgraced film producer once threatened to kill her.
“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,” she wrote.
Weinstein responded to the initial claims Hayek made against him in December, denying all allegations of sexual harassment or assault. It’s one of the only times he has spoken out about the many, many allegations made against him.
“Mr. Weinstein does not recall pressuring Salma to do a gratuitous sex scene with a female costar and he was not there for the filming,” the statement read.
“However, that was part of the story, as Frida Kahlo was bisexual and the more significant sex scene was choreographed by Ms. Hayek with Geoffrey Rush [who played Leon Trotsky]. The original uni-brow used was an issue because it diverted attention from the performances. All of the sexual allegations as portrayed by Salma are not accurate and others who witnessed the events have a different account of what transpired.”
It continued: “By Mr. Weinstein’s own admission, his boorish behaviour following a screening of Frida was prompted by his own disappointment in the cut of the movie – and a reason he took a firm hand in the final edit, alongside the very skilled director Julie Taymor.”
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