Artist and writer, Liza Campbell, added her story to the growing number of accounts of women who claim they were sexually harassed by ex-studio head Harvey Weinstein.
Campbell shared the story with the Sunday Times in the United Kingdom, saying that Weinstein once asked her to ‘jump in the bath’ with him.
She said that she heard Weinstein take off his clothes in the bathroom after telling her to come to his hotel room in the Savoy.
‘Come on, it’ll be fun. We can drink champagne. You can soap me — whaddaya say?’ Campbell said Weinstein asked.
Artist and writer, Liza Campbell (left), added her story to the growing number of accounts of women who claim they were sexually harassed by ex-studio head Harvey Weinstein (right)
She said that she heard Weinstein take off his clothes after telling her to come to his hotel room in the Savoy. Campbell (pictured), who was working as a freelance script-reader for Miramax, said she was under the impression the meeting was for business.
Campbell, who was working as a freelance script-reader for Miramax, said she was under the impression the meeting was for business.
‘My immediate reaction was fury. I’m a mother, a bloody grown-up, not some naive ingénue; what the hell does he take me for? I also felt fear,’ Campbell wrote for the Times. ‘Harvey Weinstein is huge, a pocked bullock, like a hitman from The Sopranos.’
Campbell wrote that she responded to Weinstein: ‘If you come back into this room with no clothes on I’m going to f**king lose my temper.’
She then realized she needed to escape and ran out of the room.
Weinstein had initially taken a voluntarily leave of absence following eight claims of sexual harassment allegations uncovered in an expose by The New York Times.
Campbell said the stories from Ashley Judd and others line up with her experience.
Weinstein was fired by The Weinstein Company just days after the Times published the bombshell allegations
‘When a friend sent me the piece about allegations of Harvey Weinstein harassing women, I read the headline and thought: “That train has taken way too long to pull into the station.”
‘Reading on, I was struck by how amazingly familiar the claims about his modus operandi were to me,’ she writes.
According to Campbell, she met Weinstein in the 1980s when they spontaneously shared a cab and he invited her to a screening of a film he was producing.
Campbell critiqued scripts for Shakespeare in Love and The Usual Suspects for Miramax.
Weinstein was fired by The Weinstein Company just days after the Times published the bombshell allegations.
The movie mogul was ousted by his own company’s board of directors on Sunday.
He founded the firm with his brother Bob in 2005 when he left Miramax.
In a statement, the company said: ‘In light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days, the directors of The Weinstein Company – Robert Weinstein, Lance Maerov, Richard Koenigsberg and Tarak Ben Ammar – have determined, and have informed Harvey Weinstein, that his employment with The Weinstein Company is terminated, effective immediately.’
On Friday, the board endorsed that decision and announced an investigation into the allegations.
But the Weinstein Co. board, which includes Weinstein’s brother, went further on Sunday.
Weinstein, co-chairman of the film company, has also been its face and prime operator, making the Weinstein Co. an independent film leader and near annual presence at the Academy Awards.
Rose McGowan (left) reportedly signed a non-disclosure agreement Weinstein settled a suit for $100,000 in 1995. Ashley Judd (right) says Weinstein asked her to watch him shower
An attorney for Weinstein didn’t immediately return messages Sunday.
A spokesperson for The Weinstein Co. declined to provide further details on Weinstein’s firing.
Messages left for attorney John Keirnan of the firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, who had been appointed to lead an investigation, weren’t immediately returned Sunday.
On Thursday, Weinstein issued a lengthy statement that acknowledged causing ‘a lot of pain’.
He also asked for ‘a second chance’, despite him and his lawyers criticizing the Times’ report in statements and interviews.
The New York Times article chronicled allegations against Weinstein from film star Ashley Judd and former employees at both The Weinstein Co. and Weinstein’s former company, Miramax.
‘We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting,’ said a New York Times spokesperson in a statement.
‘Mr. Weinstein was aware and able to respond to specific allegations in our story before publication. In fact, we published his response in full.’
The allegations triggered cascading chaos at the Weinstein Co. Numerous members of its all-male board have stepped down since Thursday.
The prominent attorney Lisa Bloom, daughter of well-known Los Angeles women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred, on Saturday withdrew from representing Weinstein, as did another adviser, Lanny Davis.
In 2015, a memo sent by one Weinstein Company employee, Laureon O’Connor, to its executives accusing it of a ‘toxic culture,’ The New York Times reported on Thursday.
Several members of its all-male board, including Bob Weinstein, were ‘alarmed’ the NYT said, but they were assured there was no need to investigate.
O’Connor, who had claimed a colleague had been pressured into giving Harvey Weinstein a naked massage, reached a settlement with the company.
She then retracted her complaint and thanked the mogul for the opportunities he’d given her, the paper said.