The actor has been battling for justice since the Hollywood producer attacked her more than 20 years ago. She talks about how that fight cost her motherhood and her career \u2013 but helped spark a movement<\/strong><\/p>\nWow, has it been a huge week.\u201d Rose McGowan is speaking on the phone from New York, vivid, unguarded, persuasive, so much more campaigner than celebrity. On Monday, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape and sexual assault. McGowan was not in court, and her accusation of rape against Weinstein will never be brought, as a civil or criminal case. One of the stunning side notes of this scandal is the impact of having a statute of limitations in cases of sexual violence: more than 100 women have made chillingly similar allegations against Weinstein, yet only a handful of them were recent enough for charges to be pressed.<\/p>\n
McGowan woke up an hour after the verdict was delivered, to a \u201craft of messages on my phone. And I thought: \u2018He must be guilty because otherwise nobody would have texted me.\u2019 The week before the trial, I got very little contact.\u201d This has been McGowan\u2019s reality since 1997, when Weinstein assaulted her at the Sundance film festival: she had pariah status, peppered periodically in gossip columns with insinuations about her character. Weinstein, as many of his victims attested, could freeze out an adversary so comprehensively that their phone would never ring again. \u201cEverybody expected him to get off, including me,\u201d says McGowan. \u201cIn my experience with this stuff, his defences were so strong. The two cases that were chosen to prosecute had never been successfully prosecuted in a court of law [because his accusers had continued to have contact with him after his attacks]. And also, I\u2019m just a woman. We expect to get absolutely nothing. We\u2019re so used to being dumped on that why would anybody believe us?\u201d<\/p>\n
So the result came as a physical shock? \u201cI felt like I had about 500,000lb lifted off my shoulders. I knew that I was operating at a very high anxiety level, really for the last three years, and to have that burden lifted, it felt like my cells were dissolving.\u201d<\/p>\n
The story of Weinstein\u2019s systematic assaults \u2013 \u201cHis whole movie factory,\u201d McGowan says, \u201cwas in fact a rape factory. That was his priority every day: his appointment diary had to have someone for him to meet and rape\u201d \u2013 broke on 5 October 2017, with a New York Times investigation that revealed multiple payoffs to women claiming sexual harassment, over decades. Five days later, the New Yorker published the accounts of a number of women, the result of a 10-month investigation. But the pace of that unfolding drama masked a much less hurried narrative in which everyone around the mogul knew about his behaviour. There was a surreal quality to the facts as they came to light, known knowns pouring out, surprising only in their multitude, his associates feigning astonishment. \u201cI got a message on Twitter,\u201d McGowan says wryly. It said: \u201cI am 16, I work in a coffee shop in Sydney, Australia, and I\u2019d heard about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lot was riding on this case: that statute of limitations \u2013 which doesn\u2019t apply to sexual violence in the UK \u2013 meant that, for many of Weinstein\u2019s victims, \u201cthis was a representative thing. I could feel this collective holding of breath. It\u2019s really great to be able to exhale.\u201d McGowan pauses to consider the ludicrousness of this system. \u201cLet\u2019s say you got molested at five as a child; you had seven years to bring a case against your abuser. You tell me what child is all of a sudden ready to do that. This system is completely rigged.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this razzle-dazzle Hollywood case, there was another factor \u2013 the sheer collective willingness to turn a blind eye, which had made Weinstein seem unassailable. And that is before you consider the structural factors protecting a rich rapist: it took 105 on-the-record accusations before this case came to court. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty mind-boggling,\u201d McGowan says. \u201cI wonder, what if we were Latino, what if we were black, would it have taken 300? This is so messed up \u2013 to get to sit across from your rapist and point at them and say: \u2018This is who did this to me.\u2019 Even to be able to tell your truth \u2013 never happens.\u201d McGowan really had no hope of seeing Weinstein brought to justice. \u201cI\u2019ve witnessed his power for so long.\u201d He was hugely well connected politically, a major donor to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whose daughter interned for him. Even today, McGowan says: \u201cI still have a hard time believing that he\u2019s going to end up in jail, because he\u2019s in hospital now.\u201d (He was admitted with heart problems, right after the verdict.)<\/p>\n
Over the past three years, Weinstein has sought strenuously to appear frail, coming to court on a Zimmer frame. \u201cBill Cosby did the same thing,\u201d McGowan says. \u201cWhat\u2019s left for an old man to do but to try and shrink themselves, so they\u2019re not as scary as at they were at their peak?\u201d Weinstein\u2019s people put out the word that he was having panic attacks, a breakdown. \u201cWe\u2019re not shocked \u2013 it\u2019s so par for the course,\u201d McGowan says. \u201cHe\u2019s having panic attacks? Welcome to the club. Nightmares? Welcome to the club. He did this. I know that, because I was there.\u201d His appeal for pity may make strategic sense in a legal arena, but leaves a foul taste in the mouth when set against the pattern of pitiless behaviour that McGowan describes so sharply, and which marks the careers of so many women. \u201cHe was like a heat-seeking missile. You have these beautiful kids that flood into Hollywood; most of them are damaged before they get there. And suddenly they\u2019re being told these rules don\u2019t really exist: \u2018Everybody says yes to this.\u2019 Then you add fear into the mix: \u2018You don\u2019t want to end up like Rose.\u2019 It\u2019s funny being a walking warning.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you rebuffed Weinstein, it was almost the least of your worries, to be kicked back into obscurity, although, as McGowan says: \u201cIt\u2019s a tragedy. I just did a podcast, and [through archive clips] I got to hear myself act for the first time in a long time. I was like: \u2018Damn, I was really good.\u2019 Annabella Sciorra, Mira Sorvino: who knows what they would have done? The world has been deprived; we\u2019ve been deprived. Imagine everything you\u2019ve worked towards has been destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n
You\u2019re constantly gaslit and you also have active trauma, so you do sometimes short-circuit
\nYet McGowan was also systematically discredited, \u201cconfounded and confused\u201d by the way she was routinely slated in the press. \u201cIt got to the point, if I said to someone, \u2018I want a tuna sandwich,\u2019 you\u2019d see this look: \u2018Oh my God, it\u2019s that crazy lady.\u2019 It\u2019s kind of like Mrs Rochester \u2013 we only have Mr Rochester\u2019s word for the fact that she was crazy.\u201d This persistent, deliberate erosion of normal regard created its own feedback loop: \u201cYou\u2019re constantly gaslit and you also have active trauma, so you do sometimes short-circuit.\u201d<\/p>\n
All this predates her memoir, Brave, which was published in 2018, despite nefarious sabotage attempts that remain baffling to hear about. Drones skimmed past her windowsill and the headlights were removed from her car; 125 pages of the manuscript were stolen and an investigation agent posed as her friend in order to facilitate the spying operation. \u201cThe fact that my rapist read my manuscript before anybody else, and the fact that he was in my thoughts and my head, it was so violating and so disturbing. It\u2019s so big what they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the meat of the Rico (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations) case she is bringing against Weinstein for criminal conspiracy. \u201cThis is what brought down the mafia in America. I hope the Rico goes through, and that will become a benchmark for a little girl in the town that gets raped by the football captain, and the coach and the mayor enter this conspiracy of silence; she\u2019d be able to look at a case that had been won. It will help those situations greatly.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGowan\u2019s part in exposing Weinstein has already brought her into a number of lawsuits. \u201cThe money is astronomical; I had to sell my house. Luckily, I\u2019m getting pro bono help, but to simply defend yourself or sue someone who\u2019s done you grievous wrong, the amount of money you have to have to even get one letter written \u2013 how could a normal person do this?\u201d She carried on because: \u201cI knew I had to push societal change forward, no matter the cost, but it almost killed me. Which is what they wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I wonder if we can get people to see women and girls as being human\u2019 \u2026 McGowan.<\/p>\n
These aren\u2019t simply florid phrases: there are countless unsettling details to her 20-plus years spent battling the man famously described as the person Oscar winners have thanked more often than Steven Spielberg, less often than God. On the rare occasions that she takes a flight, which is the only time she can\u2019t use a pseudonym, she has her wallet stolen. An expert witness in Weinstein\u2019s trial, Dr Barbara Ziv, who gave evidence as to why a victim might stay friendly even after an attack, was later hit by a car. You find yourself trying to shake these thoughts from your head: scepticism is far preferable to the sheer melodrama, the vast nexus of collaboration and corruption it implies. Realistically, though, McGowan points out: \u201cLysette Anthony was one of his victims,\u201d and that was in the late 80s. Serial abusers, with decades of crime and cover-up, are by nature melodramatic; then their own excesses discredit their victims.<\/p>\n
If I had had a child, I couldn\u2019t have taken Harvey Weinstein down, so I had to forego that so I could keep on fighting
\nA friend of McGowan\u2019s sent her a cartoon this week \u2013 Joan of Arc, on fire, lighting a cigarette from the flames, saying: \u201cThis reminds me of you.\u201d Warrior and rebel, she has also had her life defined by this injustice. \u201cIf I had had a child, I couldn\u2019t have taken Harvey Weinstein down, so I had to forego that so I could keep on fighting. I had to basically have no dependants. It\u2019s been very calculated.\u201d Yet the attempt to snuff out her creative life has failed. As Mike Leigh reminded her recently: \u201cRose, it\u2019s world cinema \u2013 it\u2019s not Hollywood cinema.\u201d She\u2019s writing a screenplay called Night Walk; she has a big art project coming up, Planet 9.<\/p>\n
McGowan is uninterested in playing out her victory in Hollywood, and not just because of the producers she ran into, Oscar winners, who said: \u201cMy friends and I all really hate you because we can\u2019t have fun any more,\u201d an airy reference to the entire #MeToo movement as one great buzzkill. Also because sexual violence is in the DNA of the place. \u201cOne of the worst rape cases was Hal Roach; [in 1937] he bussed out 100 to 150 actresses, telling them they were all going to get their first role, and they were taken out to the middle of nowhere and raped by all these movie theatre owners. One of the girls went to the police. That was the first record of the first mass rape in Hollywood. And it was kind of built on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGowan with the actor Asia Argento on an International Women\u2019s Day march in Rome, 2018. Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli\/AFP via Getty Images
\nAs soon as her lease is up in a couple of months, McGowan will leave New York and most likely move to London, where she has lived before. \u201cIt was really quite instrumental to my healing. The arts community, the people, the friendships, great things happened for me there, even during all the craziness, it was just gentler. America is pretty savage.\u201d<\/p>\n
In New York, Weinstein was convicted of a criminal sex act in the first degree and rape in the third degree. Even while McGowan wonders what kind of sentence he will get on 11 March \u2013 she is hoping for five years, though that is \u201cso pathetic and minuscule compared to the damage he\u2019s done\u201d \u2013 it seems probable that he will serve his time one way or another. He is facing two further criminal cases in Los Angeles \u2013 \u201cthey\u2019re different kinds of cases and there\u2019s a precedent for them\u201d \u2013 and of course he arrives in the dock a convicted rapist. \u201cIt all counts, it all matters; every nail in the coffin is another nail in the coffin.\u201d<\/p>\n
The #MeToo movement could never have been snuffed out, even had Weinstein escaped justice, since \u201cI don\u2019t think you can get that genie back in the bottle\u201d. McGowan\u2019s question was always: \u201cI wonder if we can get people to see women and girls as being human and not just being dismissed. And I think that\u2019s happened. I\u2019ve noticed so much, even being in the writers\u2019 room and being listened to.\u201d But she doesn\u2019t necessarily see culture as having turned a corner. Hollywood is smart: \u201cWhen they did the black dress thing [the Time\u2019s Up red-carpet protest of 2018], and each actress took an activist as their date, that neutralised those activists.\u201d<\/p>\n
And there is a new misogyny on the rise: Weinstein\u2019s attorney, Donna Rotunno, recently remarked to the New York Times that she would never have been assaulted because she would \u201cnever have put [herself] in that situation\u201d, to which McGowan responds: \u201cShe was dog-whistling to Incels and the alt-right. A lot of what she says is meant to appeal to that group. The media give her a pass and print what she says, and will talk to me and say \u2018What do you think?\u2019, as though they can\u2019t comment themselves.\u201d Journalists were a huge part of why this story was never told and, more generally, \u201ccorporate feminism sucks\u201d.<\/p>\n
This week represents, for McGowan, a \u201ctriumph of the will, a triumph of the system, a triumph of the jury\u201d. But she won\u2019t play Pollyanna to this spectacle. \u201cI probably am not going to be free of him until he\u2019s dead or I\u2019m dead.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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