Actress Ashley Judd says she escaped Harvey Weinstein’s sexual advances by making a deal.
She says she told him, yes, she would submit to him only after winning an Oscar in one of his movies.
Then she says she fled from his hotel room where, two decades ago, she had arrived as a young actress for what she thought would be a business meeting.
Appearing on Thursday’s Good Morning America, Judd said the business meeting in Weinstein’s hotel room turned into a negotiation not about work, but about things the producer wanted the actress to do to him.
Weinstein first offered to give her a massage, then, when she demurred, asked her to give him one, she said.
“I fought with this volley of no’s,” she said.
Then she made a “deal.” She said she agreed to submit to him, but only “when I win an Oscar in one of your movies — OK?”
“When you get nominated,” Weinstein counter-offered.
“And I said, ‘No. When I win an Oscar.’ And then I just fled.”
Judd said a couple of years after the hotel encounter she was seated across from Weinstein at a dinner. She said he brought up “that little agreement we made,” and claimed he was “looking around for the material.”
Then he looked at her and said, “You know, Ashley, I’m going to let you out of that little agreement that we made.”
Judd said by then “I had come into my own, I had come into my power, I had found my voice. And I said, ‘You do that, Harvey. You do that.’ And he has spat my name at me ever since.”
Judd was among the first of what has become dozens of women alleging sexual harassment or assault by Weinstein, who is now under criminal investigation for rape in London, New York and Los Angeles.
