Kate Beckinsale Recalls Horrific Harvey Weinstein Abuse After 9/11
Kate Beckinsale says the experience left her in tears after Weinstein called her a ‘c*nt’
After news broke that Harvey Weinstein would be sentenced to 23 years in prison for his sexual abuse crimes against multiple women in Hollywood, Kate Beckinsale took to her Instagram account to share a brutal Weinstein experience of her own. The convicted rapist producer accused Beckinsale of ruining “his premiere” of Serendipity just weeks after 9/11 occurred in an obscenity-filled rant.
First victimized by Weinstein when she was just 17 years old, Beckinsale says that in the aftermath of 9/11, no one who had worked on Serendipity was feeling particularly up to a glitzy and glamorous movie premiere in New York City.
“We all refused to go because holding a premiere mere weeks after 9/11 with the city still smoking felt like the most insensitive, tone-deaf, disrespectful idea possible,” Beckinsale writes in the caption of her photos. “But Harvey insisted. We flew into New York and somehow got through it.”
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She recalls that the day after the premiere, Weinstein called her up and asked her to bring her young daughter over for a playdate with his similarly-aged daughter. When she arrived, he immediately had a nanny take the young girls to a separate room so he could verbally abuse Beckinsale.
“The minute the door closed he started screaming ‘you stupid fucking CUNT, you CUNT you ruined my premiere,'” she writes. “I had no idea what he was talking about and started to shake. He said, ‘If I am throwing a red carpet you get in a tight dress, you shake your ass you shake your tits you do not go down it looking like a fucking lesbian you stupid fucking cunt.'”
She said the shock of it all made her cry as she tried to explain her reasoning for wearing a more modest outfit. “I tried to say ‘Harvey, the city is on fire, people are still looking for their relatives, none of us even felt the premiere was appropriate much less coming out dressed like it’s a bachelor party.'”
Weinstein was apparently having none of it, continuing his obscene rant and belittling Beckinsale. “He said ‘I don’t care -it’s my fucking premiere and if I want pussy on the red carpet that’s what I get.'”
She grabbed her daughter Lily, two at the time, and got out of his house immediately. She says it was one of “many experiences” she had with him where there were no legal recourses because he’d technically committed no crime. But she says she and her career both suffered when she dared to go against his abusive orders.
“I WAS punished for it, and for other instances where I said no to him for years, insidiously and seeming irreversibly,” she says. “Hearing that he has gone to prison for 23 years is a huge relief to me on behalf of all the women he sexually assaulted or raped, and I hope will be a deterrent to that sort of behavior in this and any other industry.”
Her first experience with Weinstein reads like that of many other actresses he abused. She was led to his hotel room when she was just 17 years old, where he answered in his bathrobe and tried, unsuccessfully, to ply her with alcohol. In a similar post she wrote over two years ago, Beckinsale says when she ran into Weinstein a few years later, he asked her if he ever “tried anything” with her. Because he literally couldn’t remember if he abused her or not — that’s how many times he’s sexually assaulted women.
Beckinsale acknowledges that the “crimes that are not crimes” when it comes to Weinstein, like the bullying and covert abuse, will never have recourse in the end, but she believes the stories need to be told regardless. “I hope and pray that we as an industry can start to actually outlaw all abuses of power and expose them and eliminate them, for all genders, forever.”
