Actress Rose McGowan used her first public speech since Hollywood’s sexual harassment scandal upended the industry to deliver a succinct message: “It’s time to clean house.”
One of the key figures in the Oct. 5 New York Times exposé on decades of sexual harassment claims against movie producer Harvey Weinstein told an audience in Detroit on Friday that her silence is over. Miss McGowan took the stage at the Women’s March Convention at Cobo Arena and encouraged women to reject Hollywood’s “messaging system for your mind.”
“I have been silenced for 20 years. I have been slut-shamed. I have been harassed. I’ve been maligned. And you know what? I’m just like you,” she said.
“Hollywood may seem like it’s an isolated thing, but it is not,” she continued, THR reported. “It is the messaging system for your mind. It is the mirror that you’re given to look into. This is what you are as a woman. This is what you are as a man. This is what you are as a boy. Girl. Gay. Straight. Transgender. But it’s all told through 96 percent males in the Directors’ Guild of America. That statistic has not changed since 1946, so we are given one view. And I know the men behind that view. And they should not be in your mind and they should not be in mind. It’s time to clean house.”
Miss McGowan reached an out-of-court settlement with Mr. Weinstein in 1997 after a Sundance Film Festival meeting in which she claims she was raped.
The actress has been vocal on Twitter since the scandal ended Mr. Weinstein’s career — the producer was terminated by Weinstein Company on Oct. 8. — but Friday’s appearance is a first in which she publicly addressed her “Rose Army” of sexual harassment victims.
“The paradigm must be subverted,” she said. “It is time. We’ve been waiting a very long time for this to happen but we don’t have to wait anymore.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.