Lupita Nyong’o, star of “12 Years a Slave” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” has joined the many women in the film industry who have come forward to accuse movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, assault, and misconduct. She has penned a piece for The New York Times describing her experience with the producer.
While Nyong’o was still a drama student at Yale, Weinstein approached her at an awards ceremony and immediately introduced himself as “the most powerful producer in Hollywood” to the budding young actress. Upon hearing this, she writes that she was “eager...but cautious about strangers, and the intentions of men in general.”
Weinstein invited Nyong’o to a film screening, but took her to lunch first, which she wasn’t expecting.
He ordered himself a vodka and diet soda and she asked for a juice, but he didn’t like that, so he told the waiter to get her a vodka and diet soda, too. She told him she didn’t want that and again, asked for the juice. Eventually Weinstein told the waiter, “Get her what I tell you to get her. I’m the one paying the bill.” He told her she “needed” to drink the vodka and soda. She said she didn’t.
Weinstein spoke to her ‘as though I...was one of his children’
Nyong’o writes that Weinstein kept insisting she drink the vodka and later took her to his house and introduced her to his family. Fifteen minutes into the film, he told her he wanted to show her something. She said she wanted to finish the film, but he demanded her “as though I too was one of his children.”
Weinstein took Nyong’o up to his bedroom and told her he wanted to give her a massage.
She thought he was joking, but he wasn’t, so she panicked and offered to give him one instead. He took off his shirt and then said he wanted to take off his pants, but she told him that would make her “extremely uncomfortable.” He stood up to do it anyway, so she darted for the door. Turns out the project he thought she was “right for” was a TV show that had been off the air for years.
