A dancer in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights got emotional on the stand Thursday as she recalled how Harvey Weinstein groped and masturbated on her inside a Puerto Rico hotel room in 2003—while the disgraced producer’s female assistant stood on the other side of the door.
The woman, identified in court as Ashley M., told Los Angeles Superior Court jurors that one day on set filming the Dirty Dancing sequel, Weinstein told her to get in a car with his assistant, Bonnie. The trio then went to a hotel under the guise of discussing future career projects before eventually ending up in a room. Suddenly, she said, the assistant shut the door behind Weinstein and Ashley M.—and Weinstein shoved her and began to take off her clothes.
“It’s not like we’re having sex, it’s just naked cuddling,” Weinstein allegedly told the woman, she recounted to Los Angeles Superior Court jurors. “I just remember in my head thinking, what do I do? Should I make a run for it? But I knew that he was just really big and I knew Bonnie was most likely out there so I didn’t know what to do.”
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Just 22 years old at the time, the dancer said Weinstein began to masturbate while groping her breasts before he ejaculated on her breasts and face.
“I was just really thankful that I wasn’t raped. I remember thinking and I remember wiping off, just getting dressed really fast and leaving really fast,” she said.
As she opened the hotel room, “still hysterical,” she said she found the assistant “right at the front of the door” with her clipboard. The trio then got back into a car and back to the set.
On Nov. 4, Weinstein's former assistant, Bonnie Hung, took the stand for the prosecution under subpoena. Hugh insisted that while she did go with Weinstein to Puerto Rico for the Dirty Dancing sequel, she does not remember Ashley M. or the alleged incident.
“I have no recollection of meeting her in Puerto Rico,” Hugh told jurors. “I don’t recall going to the hotel with her and Mr. Weinstein.”
The former assistant, however, conceded that it is possible that Ashley M.'s testimony on the stand is possible—just that she did not remember it. She added that Weinstein would often ask her to leave the room on work trips, so Ashley M.'s allegations of being alone with him are not unusual behavior.
“He would tell me and everybody else to leave so he could have a private word with whoever he was meeting with,” Hugh added.
Ashley M. is the second woman to testify against Weinstein in his sex-crimes trial in Los Angeles. She is among eight women who are set to take the stand against the toppled titan, who has pleaded not guilty to almost a dozen charges against him, including rape. The 70-year-old former producer is already serving a 23-year prison sentence after being convicted of similar crimes in New York—though that case is on appeal.
Prosecutors allege that for years, Weinstein used his power to sexually assault five Los Angeles women between 2003 and 2013—and ensure their silence. Several other women, including Ashley M., will be “bad acts” witnesses to support the prosecution’s allegations of Wenstein’s pattern of predatory behavior. The dancer’s allegations, however, are not part of the criminal charges against Weinstein.
Weinstein’s legal team has maintained that these women are fabricating their harrowing allegations and that they engaged in sex acts with Weinstein to help their career.
Ashley M. was repeatedly emotional on the stand as she recounted her 2003 allegations to jurors. She described how she grew up dancing and was thrilled when she landed the Dirty Dancing role dancing as a “body double” for the lead character in the Miramax movie filmed in Puerto Rico.
The dancer described how she first met Weinstein when he walked up to her as she was waiting to film a scene on set—and how he suggested they walk outside together. She said Weinstein soon mentioned something about a “naked massage,” which she tried to shut down after insisting that she was engaged.
“He said he did it with Gwyneth Paltrow, ‘Look what I did to her career,’” she recalled.
Ashley M. said the alleged assault happened days later, when she had been in Puerto Rico for about a week. She said that while she was initially “freaked out” to see Weinstein on set that day, she immediately felt better when she said that his assistant was also present.
The comfort of having another woman nearby, she said, allowed her to get in the car with Weinstein, who had been “very aggressive.”
“I gave her a look like, ‘Can you help me?’ with my eyes, and she looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be with you the entire time, he just wants to talk about future projects,’” Ashley M. said. “This girl is looking me right in the eye and I’m not alone, and I felt more at ease.”
“If Bonnie hadn’t been there I would have been freaking out, but I felt more at ease because Bonnie was there,” she added, noting that at first, she didn’t know they were going to a hotel.
But she said that ease immediately vanished once they got to a hotel room, when “Bonnie shut the door behind us.” When asked why she never reported the alleged assault on set, Ashley M. said she felt like nobody would help her because of Weinstein’s power in Hollywood.
“I felt that at that time everyone was afraid [for] their career and stuff,” she added.
