This is an article written by Salma Hayek for The New York Times, describing her experience of being harassed and bullied by Weinstein, much of which occurred during the filming of this film. The following is the original text-
Harvey Weinstein was a passionate film maniac, an adventurer, a patron of film talents, a loving father, and a demon.
For a long time, he was my demon.
This fall, reporters reached out to me through various channels, including my close friend Ashley Judd, to talk about this episode of my life that, as painful as it was, I thought I could Treat calmly.
I've brainwashed myself into thinking it's over and I've gotten over it; I've evaded the responsibility of speaking up by arguing that enough people were involved in exposing the devil. I don't think my voice matters and it won't make a difference.
In fact, I was trying to save myself the challenge of explaining a few things to my loved ones: why I didn't go into details when I casually mentioned that I, like so many others, had been bullied by Harvey. And why, over the years, we have been warm and friendly to a man who hurt me so deeply. I used to be proud of my forgiveness, but the truth was that I was ashamed to describe details that I had forgotten. This makes me wonder if that chapter in my life has really been turned over.
When so many women came forward to describe what Harvey had done to them, I had to face my cowardice and bow my head to accept that my story, while important to me, was nothing but a sea of sadness and confusion a drop of water. I thought that until now, no one would care about my pain. Maybe it's because I've heard people, especially Harvey, say I'm nothing.
We are finally aware of a socially accepted evil. It insults and humiliates countless girls like me because every woman has a girl inside. I'm inspired by people who have the courage to speak up, especially in a society that elects a president who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than a dozen women, and we've all heard him say powerful of men can do whatever they want with women.
It won't go on like this again.
From student to Mexican soap opera star to extra in a few American films to a chance to star in "Desperado" and "Fools Rush In," 14 years of stumbling, haha V. Weinstein became the wizard of a movie trend that made original content mainstream. Meanwhile, it is unthinkable for a Mexican actress to seek a place in Hollywood. Even though I've proven them wrong, I'm still nothing.
One of the forces that made me determined to pursue a career was the story of Frida Kahlo. In the golden age of Mexican murals, she was willing to paint the kind of intimate little paintings that no one looked down on. She has the courage to express herself while ignoring doubts. My greatest ambition is to tell her story. It became my mission to paint the life of this extraordinary artist and show my native Mexico in a way that defies stereotypes.
The Weinstein Empire, then Miramax, became synonymous with quality, sophistication and risk-taking, a haven for sophisticated, rebellious art workers. They are exactly what I see Frida as having, and what I aspire to have.
I had already started a journey with another company, but then I struggled to get it back and hand it over to Harvey.
I got to know Harvey a little bit through my relationship with director Roberto Rodriguez and his then-wife, producer Elizabeth Avellan. I've worked with this couple on a few films and they brought me into their circle. All I knew about Harvey at the time was that he was intelligent, a man who was devoted to his friends and family.
From what I know now, I wonder if my friendship with them — and with Quentin Tarantino, George Clooney — saved me from being raped.
Our original agreement was that Harvey would pay me the royalties for the finished work. As an actress, what I'm going to get is the Screen Actors Guild minimum wage plus 10%. As a producer, I'd get a title that hasn't been determined yet, but not paid. This was not uncommon for female producers in the '90s. He also asked me to sign a deal with Miramax to make a few more films, which I thought would establish my heroine status.
I don't care about money. I'm already very excited to work with him and this company. I honestly thought that my dream had come true. He recognized the 14 years before that in my life. He also gave me -- the unknown person -- a chance. He agreed.
What I didn't expect was that it would later turn out to be me saying "no" to him.
Say no to knocking on his door any time of the night, from hotel to hotel, location to location, and even a filming location he wasn't involved in, and he'd pop up out of nowhere.
Say no to bathing with him.
Say no to allowing him to watch me take a shower.
Say no to allowing him to massage me.
Say no to a friend who allows him to massage me naked.
Say no to allowing him to give me oral sex.
Say no to letting me undress with another woman.
no, no, no, no, no...
With each rejection, his Machiavellian rage followed.
There's nothing he hates more than the word "no", I think. His ridiculous demands can range from a furious phone call to me in the middle of the night to fire my agent because they got into an argument over another client's other film, to a hands-on call at the Venice Film Festival. I dragged out the opening ceremony of the Frida tribute just for me to join him at his private party with some women I thought were models, only to find out later that they were all High class prostitute.
His means of persuasion can be sweet words or terrifying words like that in the angry attack, "I'm going to kill you, don't think I can't do it."
When he finally believed that I wasn't going to get the film the way he expected, he told me that he had given my role to another actress along with the script I'd been working on for years.
In his eyes, I am not an artist, I am not even a person, but an object: I am not nothing, I am a body.
At this point, I had no choice but to seek the help of a lawyer, and instead of prosecuting it as a sexual harassment case, I charged it as a "malicious" case, because I put so much effort into this movie and he never had plan to shoot or sell it to me. I try to get the movie out of his company.
He claimed that as an actress, I was not famous enough and that I was not a qualified producer. But he gave me a list of impossible and tight deadlines that, in my opinion, were his way of getting out of legal responsibility.
1. Rewrite the script with no extra pay.
2. Raise $10 million in production funding.
3. Get a top director.
4. Select famous actors for four smaller roles.
To the great surprise of many people—especially myself—I did it. Thanks to this group of angels who came to save me. These included Edward Norton, who rewrote the brilliant script several times but sadly never signed it, and thanks to my friend Margaret Perenchio, who was a first-time producer funds. And then there was the talented Julie Taymor who agreed to direct, and she's been my stalwart ever since. For the other characters, I called my friends Antonio Banderas, Edward Norton, and my dear Ashley Judd. To this day, I don't know how I persuaded Geoffrey Rush, when we barely knew each other.
Now, not only is Harvey Weinstein frustrated, he's making a movie he doesn't want to make.
Ironically, after we started filming, the sexual harassment stopped, but the anger was building. We had to pay the price for rebelling against Harvey on almost every day we shot. Once, in an interview, he said that Julie and I were the worst tigress he had ever seen, and we took that as a compliment.
Halfway through the shoot, Harvey appeared on set complaining about Frida's "one-line eyebrows." He insisted that I get rid of Frida's limp characteristic, and he berated my performance. Then he let everyone in the room out except me. He told me that the only thing I had value in was being sexy, and that movie wasn't sexually appealing. So he told me he was going to stop making that movie because no one wanted to see me in that role.
This hit me hard because I admit, I was lost in the fog of Stockholm Syndrome and wanted him to think of me as an artist: not just a great actress, but someone who could find a compelling story, Someone who tells it in a novel way.
At the time, I kept hoping that he would recognize me as a producer and, in addition to fulfilling his demands, could lead the script and get permission to use those paintings. I negotiated with the Mexican government, with all the people necessary, to be able to shoot in places that no one had used before, including Frida Kahlo's house and murals by Kahlo's husband, Diego Rivera .
Still, all of this seems worthless. The only thing he noticed was that I wasn't sexy in this movie. He made me question whether I was an actor, but he never convinced me that the movie wasn't worth making.
He made a condition for continuing the shooting. If I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman, he would let me finish that movie. He requested full frontal nudity.
He had been asking for more exposure and more sex scenes before. One time before, he wanted Ashley Judd's Tina Modotti and Frida to have sex after dancing the tango, and Julie Taimoor eventually convinced him to give him a kiss instead.
But this time, it was clear to me that if I didn't somehow satisfy his sexual fantasies, he would never let me finish the film. There is no room for negotiation.
I can only agree. By then, I had already invested many years in that film. We've been filming for about five weeks, and I've convinced so many talented people to take part. How can I waste their brilliant work?
I've asked so many people to help, and I feel a huge pressure to hand over my work, and a huge thank you to all the people who believed in me and followed me to do this crazy thing. So I agreed to do that pointless scene.
That day, I got to the set to do that scene that I thought would save that movie. For the first and last time in my career, I had a mental breakdown: my body started shaking involuntarily, I was short of breath, and I couldn't stop crying and crying, as if I was spitting out tears.
Since the people around me didn't know what happened to Harvey and I, they were very surprised by my struggles that morning. Not because I'm going to be naked against another woman. It was because of Harvey Weinstein that she and I had to be naked. But then, I couldn't say that to them.
I knew in my heart that I had to do it, but my body kept crying and twitching. At one point I started vomiting while waiting for a set of stills. I had to take a sedative, which finally stopped my crying but made the vomiting worse. So as you can imagine, it wasn't sexy, but that was the only way I could survive that scene.
By the time the filming phase was over, I was in such a bad mood that I didn't get much involved in post-production.
After Harvey saw the edited film, he said it wasn't good enough for a theatrical release, and he wanted to release it as a video.
This time, Jolie had to fight him alone to get him to agree that if we got 80+ points from the test, we could show it in a theater in New York.
Fewer than 10% of films achieved this score at their first screening.
I didn't go to the test screening. I anxiously await the results. The film scored 85 points.
I heard that Harvey was furious again. After the preview, he yelled at Julie in the theater's lobby. He crumpled a scorecard into a ball and threw it in her face. The ball of paper hit her in the nose and bounced off. Jolie's boyfriend, Elliot Goldenthal, the film's arranger, stood in her way, and Harvey threatened him with violence.
After Harvey calmed down, I summoned the courage to call him and ask him to show the film in a Los Angeles theater, two in all. He agreed without being too difficult. I have to say he's friendly, funny, witty at times - but here's the thing: you never know what he's like when.
A few months later, in October 2002, the film about my hero and inspiration—a Mexican artist with a one-word brow and a lame leg that never really gained recognition while he was alive—the Harvey The film, which he never really wanted to make, gave him an unpredictable box-office success that, despite his lack of support, earned him six Oscar nominations, including a nomination for best actress.
Frida eventually won him two Oscars, but I never saw any joy. He never asked me to star in a movie again. According to my original agreement with Miramax, I was in minor supporting roles in the films I had to be in.
Years later, I ran into him at an event and he pulled me aside and told me he had quit smoking and had a heart attack. He said he was in love, married to Georgina Chapman, and said he wasn't the same as before. Finally, he said to me, "You did a great job in Frida; we made a great movie.
"I believed his words. Harvey would never know how much they meant to me. He would never know how much he hurt me. I never let him see how much he made me feel. Fear. When I see him in a social setting, I smile, try to think of his good points, and say to myself, I'm fighting, I'm winning.
But why do so many female artists, so talented, have to fight to tell our stories? Why do we have to fight so hard to preserve our dignity?
I think it's because as women we've been artfully devalued to the point that the film industry is no longer trying to figure out what women audiences want to see and what stories women want to tell.
A recent study showed that from 2007 to 2016, only 4 percent of directors were women, and 80 percent of them were offered just one film. Another study found that in 2016, only 27 percent of lines in blockbuster films were spoken by women. People wonder why our voices were not heard sooner. I think, these statistics speak for themselves - our voices are not welcome.
Unless our industry achieves equality between men and women — men and women are of equal value in all respects — our communities will continue to be a haven for sexual predators.
I thank everyone who listened to our experience. I hope that by adding my own voice to the chorus of those who end up speaking, it will help to figure out why it was so hard and why so many of us waited so long. Men sexually harass because they can. Women are not speaking up until today because, in this new era, we are finally able to speak up.
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