No regrets. Ashley Judd spoke about her experience working with The New York Times for the profile that detailed decades of sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein on Tuesday, November 5.
“Well I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Judd said at TimesTalks x Los Angeles at the The Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills. “I’ve told this story many times before. I told it to my dad, who was in the lobby right after the incident in the hotel happened, I told it on set at Kiss the Girls, when I went back to filming, I told the entire story in even more detail that was included in The New York Times and Variety magazine in 2015 — while not mentioning Harvey’s name.”
She continued, “We worked together for about four months. It was a very careful process and ultimately, my decision, I went on a run, spent some time out in the woods, and it was again, very easy. There was a simple clarity call inside of me, like, this is the right thing to do. Whatever may happen after this, I can’t do anything about. That will be out of my hands. I sure am glad I did.”
Judd, 49, is referring to a story where she claimed Weinstein summoned her to his room at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel two decades ago and greeted her in bathrobe before asking if he could give her a massage or watch him take a shower.
The Double Jeopardy actress, who revealed she first learned what assault was at 7 years old after she was molested as a child, was featured on the cover of Time magazine’s Person of the Year issue on Wednesday, December 6, as one of “The Silence Breakers.” Rose McGowan, Taylor Swift, Alyssa Milano, Tarana Burke, Terry Crews and Selma Blair are among the other people included.
Judd also explained that she was not sure what the public reaction to the Weinstein exposé would be.
“I was living in this lacuna, there was definitely a gap between: this is easy, this is the right thing to do, and something really big is getting ready to happen and I couldn’t predict exactly what it was,” Judd said. “But I knew that there was huge change afoot. Perhaps the change was going to be, ‘Oh hey, I just got slapped with an absolutely massive libel and defamation lawsuit.’ Or maybe the change was going to be that all of the women who had been affected by Harvey and his damaging and obnoxious ways, would come together with women across all spaces and sectors and industries and say, ‘Basta. Enough is enough.’”
Reporting by Taylor Ferber
