Julianna Margulies recounts experiences Harvey Weinstein and Steven Seagal
ER star expressed her continued concern for other young women who may still be vulnerable
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Your support makes all the difference.Actress Julianna Margulies has spoken out about her experiences with Harvey Weinstein and Steven Seagal when she was starting out as an actress.
The star of TV's The Good Wife told Jenny Hutt on Sirius XM's Just Jenny show that earlier in her career, said that in both encounters female assistants led her to hotel rooms on the premise of a business meeting.
But she said, "these women were leading me to the lion's den."
Margulies alleges that in 1996, during her third season on ER, she was told that if she met with Weinstein, she would get a screen test.
She also says she was promised, at the time, that the woman accompanying her would be in the hotel room with both of them.
"She knocked on the door, and she was standing behind me," Margulies recalled. "And he opened the door in a bathrobe. I could see that there were candles lit in the room, and there was a dinner for two. And I saw him stare at her, daggers."
Margulies looked to the other woman. "And I caught her in a shrug - like, 'What could I do?' And he looked at me, furious, and he took the door and he said, ‘Just wanted to say good audition.’ And he slammed the door," she said. She did not get the part in question.
In reference to Seagal, Margulies said she was 23 when a female casting director asked her to go to the actor's room to go over a scene at 10pm. She was told it was between her and another actress for the role, which would have landed her a Screen Actors Guild card, a gateway to the industry.
Margulies said that when she arrived at the hotel, the casting director wasn't present, but Seagal was. When she entered his hotel room, she said: "I saw his gun, which I had never seen a gun in real life".
She added that she somehow, she got out of the room, "unscathed."
"I never was raped," she said. "And I never was harmed. And I don’t know how I got out of that hotel room…I sorta screamed my way out."
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TV reporter Lisa Guerrero and actress Rae Dawn Chong have made similar claims, but Seagal is has not previously made comment on any of these allegations.
Though she says now she's established enough in her career to avoid such incidents, she expressed her continued concern for other young women who may still be vulnerable. "What's a sixteen-year-old actress supposed to do?" she asked.
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