Speaking out! Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep are standing up against Harvey Weinstein for using their names to have a sexual misconduct lawsuit against him dismissed in court.
“Harvey Weinstein and his company are continuing to do what they have always done which is to take things out of context and use them for their own benefit,” Lawrence, 27, told TMZ on Thursday, February 22. “This is what predators do, and it must stop.”
The Red Sparrow star added: “For the record, while I was not victimized personally by Harvey Weinstein, I stand behind the women who have survived his terrible abuse and I applaud them in using all means necessary to bring him to justice whether through criminal or civil actions. Time’s up.”
Streep, 68, stood by Weinstein’s alleged victims and slammed him for using her as an example in his documents. “Harvey Weinstein’s attorneys use of my (true) statement — that he was not sexually transgressive or physically abusive in our business relationship — as evidence that he was not abusive with many OTHER women is pathetic and exploitive,” The Post actress told Deadline on Wednesday, February 21. “The criminal actions he is accused of conducting on the bodies of these women are his responsibility, and if there is any justice left in the system he will pay for them — regardless of how many good movies, made by many good people, Harvey was lucky enough to have acquired or financed.”
On Tuesday, February 20, Weinstein responded to a sexual misconduct class-action lawsuit filed against him and The Weinstein Company on behalf of all women who worked with him, asking for it to be thrown out by the court. In the documents obtained by The Blast, the producer attempted to use the Oscar winners as evidence that he had solely professional relationships with them.
The producer mentioned Lawrence, citing a past interview in which she said she knew Weinstein since she was 20 years old and that “he had only ever been nice to me.” The documents also added a previous statement from Streep which said that Weinstein had “always been respectful to her in their working relationship.”
Gwyneth Paltrow — who claimed in October 2017 that she had been harassed by the Hollywood executive when she was 22 — was also brought up in the documents, saying that the actress chose to work with Weinstein even after the alleged misconduct took place. “Gwyneth Paltrow was allegedly harassed during the filming of Emma in 1994, which allegedly caused her to fear the prospect of being fired,” the documents read. “Yet, Paltrow went on to star in another Weinstein production — Shakespeare in Love — for which she won an Academy Award in 1998.”
The statement continued: “Paltrow was not so offended that she refused to work with Weinstein again, nor did her career suffer as a result of her rebuffing his alleged advances.”
Weinstein was fired from his own company in October 2017 after The New York Times published an exposé detailing more than three decades of sexual harassment accusations. Since the article’s publication, more than 60 more women have come forward alleging Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them as well. The filmmaker has denied all allegations made against him.
