Like many other actresses for two months, Salma Hayek claims to have been harassed, humiliated and threatened by producer Harvey Weinstein during the filming of “Frida” in 2002.
“Harvey is also my monster.” This is the title chosen by Hollywood actress Salma Hayek for her tribune published Wednesday, December 13 in the “New York Times”, where she discusses his relationship with Harvey Weinstein.
In her text, the 51-year-old Mexican-Lebanese actress claims to have been harassed, humiliated and threatened on numerous occasions by the American producer. The latter would have asked him, on different occasions, to take a shower with him, to let him have sexual contact with her or to be naked in front of him with another woman. Like many others for two months, she describes a Harvey Weinstein mixing gentleness and aggressiveness, manipulator devil, to which she has always refused to give in, she says.
“All the sexual allegations described by Salma are not accurate and others who have witnessed these events have a different memory of what happened,” reacted Wednesday a producer spokeswoman in a message conveyed to AFP.
Blackmail
The essence of Salma Hayek’s story focuses on the production of the film “Frida”, a project very dear to the actress, a great admirer of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. The Miramax studio, founded and directed by Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob, had decided to produce the film (released in 2002), of which Salma Hayek was also co-producer and copyright holder.
Conscious that she would never give in to his advances, even to make his film, Harvey Weinstein would have told him that he had chosen another actress to play the lead role. She says that she seized lawyers to plead bad faith and regain control of the production. She did not succeed but finally retained the lead role.
“Even though Jennifer Lopez was interested in the role of Frida and was a bigger star at the time, Mr. Weinstein went off the opinion of other investors and supported Salma for the lead role,” said the door. -parol of the producer in disgrace.
Once the filming started, she said that Weinstein would have intervened several times to criticize the direction of the project or Salma Hayek herself. “He told me that the only thing I had for me was my sex appeal and that he was missing from the film,” she says in the testimony, claiming that the Hollywood tycoon would have asked to erase certain aspects of the character, his thick eyebrows or his claudication.
“As in most collaborative projects, there have been creative frictions on ‘Frida’, but this has brought the project to perfection,” said spokesperson Harvey Weinstein. The producer would also have placed a condition sine qua non to complete the film: that Salma Hayek turns a sex scene with another actress, in which the two women were naked, she says.
Pressure
Realizing that the project would not succeed otherwise, she said she finally accepted but was physically ill during the shooting of the scene. Harvey Weinstein “does not remember putting pressure on Salma” to shoot this scene “and was not there at the time of filming,” said former Hollywood mogul spokeswoman.
One hundred women have accused Harvey Weinstein of harassment, sexual assault or rape since the New York Times revelations in early October. Three investigations are underway in London, New York and Los Angeles.