Actor Thandie Newton, star of Netflix series Westworld, has given a blisteringly honest interview at Vulture, revealing a number of traumatizing incidents from throughout her long Hollywood career, ranging from her alleged sexual assault to a purportedly racist encounter with former Sony Pictures boss Amy Pascal.
Speaking to E. Alex Jung, Newton opened up about her experience on the set of 1991 movie Flirting, where she was allegedly groomed and sexually abused by 39-year-old director John Duigan. At the time, the press reported the abuse as an affair, even though Newton was only 16.
“If someone brought it up - and of course they’re going to bring it up in a f—ing interview, man - if they spoke about it in a way that’s not sympathetic or they called it an affair, it was insult to injury. It’s like re-abuse,” Newton said.
“I think the reason I talked about it a lot, too, is I’m trying to find someone who understands. I’m looking for help. It’s so f**king obvious to me. What is the point if we don’t expose what needs to be exposed?”
Newton went on to reveal the numerous reasons she turned down a role in last year's Charlie’s Angels remake.
“One of the biggest movies I didn’t end up doing was because the director said to me, ‘I can’t wait for this. The first shot is going to be … You’re going to think it’s like yellow lines down a road, and you pull back and you realise it’s the stitching, because the denim is so tight on your ass it’s going to look like tarmac,” Newton said.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t think we’re going to go down this road together.'”
According to Vulture, when Newton later met with former Sony head Amy Pascal, she was told that the movie [Charlie's Angels] would need to make her character “believable” as a college-educated woman. Newtown claims Pascal then suggested a scene in a bar where Newton’s character “gets up on a table and starts shaking her booty.”
“She’s basically reeling off these stereotypes of how to be more convincing as a Black character,” Newton told Jung.
“Everything she said, I was like, ‘Nah, I wouldn’t do that.’ She’s like, ‘Yeah, but you’re different. You’re different.’ That was Amy Pascal. That’s not really a surprise, is it? Let’s face it: I didn’t do the movie as a result.”
Giving a comment to Vulture, Pascal said that while she did not recall the conversation she was “horrified” by the story.
“While I take her words seriously, I have no recollection of the events she describes, nor do any of her representatives who were present at that casting session,” Pascal said.
“I’ve long considered Thandie a friend; I’m thankful that I’ve had the chance to make movies with her; and I hope to work with her again in the future.”
