Harvey Weinstein & Quentin Tarantino Respond to Uma Thurman's Assault Claims
Harvey Weinstein's lawyer threatened possible "legal action" against Uma Thurman for her sexual assault allegations, while director Quentin Tarantino gave a lengthy interview to Deadline on his alleged "Kill Bill" behavior.
Uma Thurman said she needed time to collect herself before sharing her own experiences with producer Harvey Weinstein. Thurman worked with Weinstein and QT on "Pulp Fiction" and the "Kill Bill" movies, and she shared disturbing experiences with both men.
Thurman told the New York Times that Weinstein made awkward passes at her, then ultimately attacked her at a London hotel. Read her whole story.
"I used the word 'anger' but I was more worried about crying, to tell you the truth," she says now. "I was not a groundbreaker on a story I knew to be true. So what you really saw was a person buying time." https://t.co/I1ZZWZ9mL5
— iana (@yorgosIanthimos) February 3, 2018
Uma Thurman's then-warning to Harvey Weinstein: "If you do what you did to me to other people you will lose your career, your reputation and your family, I promise you." https://t.co/fqHqGrLYjg
— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) February 3, 2018
Uma Thurman tells her story. Among many other painful things, she feels responsible for the young women who would walk alone into a room with Harvey Weinstein https://t.co/p6IOsMIEu6pic.twitter.com/41pu8VEkmx
— Mark Berman (@markberman) February 3, 2018
She also shared stories about working with Tarantino on the set of "Kill Bill" -- saying the director spat in her face, strangled her, and made her do a car stunt against her will. That car stunt led to a major injury. (She released footage from that stunt with her New York Times story.)
After Thurman's story came out, Weinstein shared a couple of statements -- one from his lawyer threatening possible legal action against Thurman.
Harvey Weinstein issues statement responding to Uma Thurman's allegations: 'Her claims about being physically assaulted are untrue. And this is the first time we have heard those details.' pic.twitter.com/EYpKyxINfj
— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) February 3, 2018
New statement from Weinstein's attorney re: Thurman says he is determining whether "legal action" is warranted https://t.co/pKVyPa7O48pic.twitter.com/QPX5GtIjkT
— Katie Kilkenny (@katiekilkenny7) February 3, 2018
As Deadline noted:
"While the threat of legal action is a typical response for many of the men accused of sexual misconduct in recent months, an actual lawsuit could put the producer himself into court and under rules of discovery."
See you in court? Is that really what Weinstein would want? It's ironic, since he should've been in court decades ago for all of his alleged misbehavior. Deadline posted the photos Weinstein's lawyer shared, showing Weinstein with Thurman, Tarantino, and others.
Actress Jessica Chastain and director Judd Apatow were among the many stars and fans to respond to Thurman's stories.
Weinstein's behavior has been well documented, and he's in heaps of hot water from his many, many accusers. But what about Tarantino? His alleged behavior ended up being a big topic of discussion.
Tarantino also ignored Daryl Hannah's complaints when she was harassed by Harvey Weinstein.They kicked her off the press tour.Nobody helped her. And now Tarantino is going to make a movie about Polanski. Why is someone financing this? This is why Weinstein wasn't stopped. $$$$ https://t.co/WlSVFEoVN4
— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) February 3, 2018
I keep imagining Tarantino spitting in Uma's face and strangling her with a chain for KILL BILL. How many images of women in media do we celebrate that showcase abuse? When did this become normalized 'entertainment'?
— Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) February 4, 2018
Directors inserting themselves into a scene depicting abuse is crossing a boundary. How can an actor feel safe when your director is strangling you?
— Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) February 4, 2018
I'm so furious after reading this. To almost kill an actress in a stunt...for no other reason but an egomaniac director flaunting power. Meantime, 1st ADs, stunt choreographers, the teamster who warned Uma...they all would have suffered career ending consequences had she died https://t.co/jRyffJk8Wo
— Lexi Alexander (@Lexialex) February 3, 2018
There were calls for Quentin Tarantino to address what happened, so he did just that in a Q&A with Deadline.
It's very long, but he basically took ownership of the car stunt gone wrong, while not seeing the problem with the spitting. He also explained the choking situation, and said Uma basically told him he should've just said his piece to the New York Times so this didn't become about him.
Here are just a couple of questions from the lengthy discussion:
DEADLINE: What about the description of you choking Uma with the chain...
TARANTINO: In the case of the choking, when Gogo [Chiaki Kuryama] throws her chain ball at the bride, and the chain wraps around her neck. And then she's getting choked by it. Frankly, I wasn't sure how we were going to shoot that scene. Wrap a chain around the neck, you've got to see choking. I was assuming that when we did it, we would have maybe a pole behind Uma that the chain would be wrapped around so it wouldn't be seen by the camera, at least for the wide shot. But then it was Uma's suggestion. To just wrap the thing around her neck, and choke her. Not forever, not for a long time. But it's not going to look right. I can act all strangle-ey, but if you want my face to get red and the tears to come to my eye, then you kind of need to choke me.
I was the one on the other end of the chain and we kind of only did it for the close ups. And we pulled it off. Now, that was her idea. Consequently, I realize...that is a real thing. When I did Inglourious Basterds, and I went to Diane [Kruger], and I said, look, I've got to strangle you. If it's just a guy with his hands on your neck, not putting any kind of pressure and you're just doing this wiggling death rattle, it looks like a normal movie strangulation. It looks movie-ish. But you're not going to get the blood vessels bulging, or the eyes filling it with tears, and you're not going to get the sense of panic that happens when your air is cut off. What I would like to do, with your permission, is just...commit to choking you, with my hands, in a closeup. We do it for 30 seconds or so, and then I stop. If we need to do it a second time, we will. After that, that's it. Are you down to committing to it so we can get a really good look. It'll be twice, and only for this amount of time, and the stunt guy was monitoring the whole thing.
Diane said, yeah sure. She even said on film in an interview, it was a strange request but by that point I trusted Quentin so much that, sure. We did our two times, and then like Uma with the spitting thing, Diane said, okay, if you need to do it once more, you can. That was an issue of me asking the actress, can we do this to get a realistic effect. And she agreed with it, she knew it would look good and she trusted me to do it. I would ask a guy the same thing. In fact, I would probably be more insistent with a guy.
DEADLINE: You spoke with Uma after this article appeared. Where do you come out at the end of this. Do you feel that the two of you are okay, now?
TARANTINO: We've been okay. Uma was in turmoil about the uprising against me this whole weekend. She blames me for not talking to Maureen Dowd, saying it's your own damn fault. She never meant this to roll over onto me. We've been talking about it ad nauseum and I feel bad because she has been doing a Broadway play, at the same time. The whole weekend, we've been talking. The uproar that happened against me, she was not prepared for. We have a long complicated history. We have been dealing with it for 22 years. We're both one of the closest people in each other's lives. So it was rather shocking to read this article, where the headline is about Uma's anger, and lumping me into her anger about Harvey. As much detail as they went into, no one seemed to care about the Harvey stuff.
[...] Me and Uma had our issues about the crash. She blamed me for the crash and she had a right to blame me for the crash. I didn't mean to do it. I talked her into getting in the car, I assured her the road was safe. And it wasn't. The car might even have been dubious too even if I didn't know that then. We had our issues about it.
We weren't estranged. But we were over each other for a couple of years. Oddly enough, when The New York Times did a series on famous director and their collaborator series. One was me and Uma. I remember being backstage, me with my people and Uma with hers. We were pleasant but not like the close friends we had been. We weren't chummy like we'd been after this cooling off, this estrangement. Guess who should be the monitor of this New York Times piece. Larissa MacFarquhar, the New Yorker reporter who'd been on the Kill Bill set that fateful day. This was half a year after Kill Bill 2 had come out. We go up on stage, we're going to do the show, and at some point doing that piece, me and Uma started talking in that back and forth verbiage, in a way we hadn't in a long time. She started making fun of me, teasing me, and next thing I knew we were talking like Quentin and Uma again. The audience enjoyed our banter, and we kind of found each other again. We found each other on the stage and we had a big dinner with our friends and it was really cool.
Some time, shortly after that, we had a big dinner in the Soho House in New York and there we dealt with all the car stuff, and all the resentments she had toward me. The things she felt I could have done better in protecting her in that movie. And we hashed it all out, put it behind her and we've been fantastic friends ever since.
Two days after her NY Times interview, Uma Thurman posted part of the crash video on Instagram, and further shared that she isn't upset with QT the way she's upset with Harvey and these other guys:
[Via: THR, Deadline, Deadline, NY Times, Twitter]
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