Ive heard rumors, and the rumors in general started back in the 90s, and they were that certain actresses had slept with Harvey to get a role. It seemed like a way to smear the actresses and demean them by saying that they didnt get the jobs based on their talent, so I took those rumors with a grain of salt. But the other part of this, the part were hearing now about eight women being paid off, I didnt hear anything about that and I dont know anyone that did. Thats a whole other level and theres no way you can reconcile that. Theres nothing to say except that its indefensible.
A lot of people are doing the you had to know thing right now, and yes, if youre asking if I knew that someone who was very powerful had a tendency to hit on young, beautiful women, sure. But I had no idea that it had gone to the level of having to pay off eight women for their silence, and that these women were threatened and victimized. Ive been talking with a lot of people about this, and I dont know many people who knew of that.
Sharon Waxman over at The Wrap said she was working on a story about Harvey over 10 years ago at The New York Times and they killed it, and if thats true, then thats a shameful thing because a lot of women wouldnt have been made victims if this had come out. By the same token, I do want to say that Sharons been running her own influential website, The Wrap, for quite a long time, and if she did these interviews and this investigation, she didnt run the story either, and I and a lot of other people would have liked to have known it. A good bunch of people that I know would say, Yeah, Harveys a dog or Harveys chasing girls, but again, this is a very different kind of thing. This is harassment on a very high level. And theres an argument that everyone is complicit in it. I suppose the argument would be that its not just about Hollywood, but about all of usthat every time you see someone using their power and influence to take advantage of someone without power and influence and you dont speak up, youre complicit. And theres no question about that.
I see his point. There's a difference between hearing that a guy is a horn dog (look at how people today defend Trump's allegations) and knowing how far it actually went.