Salma Hayek has broken her silence on the sexual misconduct that she now claims to have been a victim of while working under Harvey Weinstein 15 years ago.
Hayek came forward with her allegations via a guest column published in the New York Times on Wednesday, December 13. In a piece titled "Harvey Weinstein Is My Monster Too" the 51-year-old actress details some of the outlandish requests that were made of her while completing her 2002 film, Frida.
She says that they included the Hollywood heavyweight asking if she would shower with him or at least let him watch as she bathed; him begging to give her a massage; and her having to turn down his expressed yearning to perform oral sex on her.
According to Hayek, her resistance to Weinstein's advances led to professional repercussions. She recounts the embattled producer making veiled threats to shelf the feature if he didn't get his way and then following his ultimatums up by actually trying to sabotage the production.
Hayek says that in knowing that he couldn't outright discriminate against her he instead resorted to delegating "impossible tasks" with tight deadlines in order to "clear himself legally" while making her job more difficult.
The one hurdle Harvey placed before her that Hayek says she would eventually cave in to, involved an agreement to work things out and move forward with the release if she shot the nude scene viewers will recall airing in the flick. "My body began to shake uncontrollably, my breath was short and I began to cry and cry," she wrote of the experience. "It was not because I would be naked with another woman. It was because I would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein... I had to take a tranquilizer, which eventually stopped the crying but made the vomiting worse."
Hayek's reason for waiting so long to bring her Harvey Weinstein experience to the light of day is one that for a long time she felt hit too close to home. "I hid from the responsibility to speak out with the excuse that enough people were already involved in shining a light on my monster," she wrote. "In reality, I was trying to save myself the challenge of explaining several things to my loved ones."
Source: nytimes.com
