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Rose McGowan says she was offered hush money from someone in Weinstein's inner circle
The actress states she was offered $1 million to sign a nondisclosure agreement by someone close to the producer
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Your support makes all the difference.Days before multiple women came forward with accusations of sexual harassment and rape against Harvey Weinstein, Rose McGowan states she was offered $1 million to sign a nondisclosure agreement by someone close to the producer.
McGowan had publicly hinted about the alleged incident in the past, in which she was raped in a hotel room by Weinstein when she was an up-and-coming actress in 1997; at the time, she had reached a $100,000 settlement with Weinstein, but learned this summer that it never included a confidentiality clause.
"I had all these people I’m paying telling me to take it so that I could fund my art," McGowan told the New York Times of the nondisclosure offer; no longer acting, McGowan has turned her attention to multimedia art, but has had her funds drained by healthcare costs for her father, who died eight years ago.
She initially responded by asking for $6 million as an act of defiance. "I figured I could probably have gotten him up to three. But I was like - ew, gross, you're disgusting, I don't want your money, that would make me feel disgusting," she told the Times.
However, she pulled her offer in the light of the Times' bombshell report on Weinstein and his decades of allegations, revealing at least seven other settlements he had reached with accusers. Since then, over 60 women have come forward. Weinstein has denied all accusations of non-consensual sex.
During an interview recorded in January obtained by the Observer, McGowan said she did not report the rape to the police because a criminal lawyer told her she was not likely to be successful in her case. She added: "Also, I didn’t want his name next to mine in my obituary; his name doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as mine when I’m dead".
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