A fourth woman has come forward to accuse actor Chris Noth of sexual assault, claiming he forcibly kissed and groped her in her New York apartment in 2002.
The woman, singer-songwriter Lisa Gentile, spoke out in a press conference Thursday with high-profile attorney Gloria Allred. Her claims follow those of three other women who allege the Sex and the City star sexually assaulted them between 2004 and 2015—allegations that Noth has strongly denied. There was no immediate comment from Noth on the new accusation.
Gentile says she met Noth in 1998, when they were both regulars at Manhattan restaurant Da Marino. The two became acquaintances, she says, and one night he gave her a ride home and asked to see her apartment. She says she showed him the kitchen and offered him wine, and that he then leaned her against the countertop and started forcibly kissing her and shoving his hands under her shirt.
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She tried to push his hands away, she says, but he pushed them toward his penis. She finally succeeded in escaping his grasp and yelled at him that this was not what she wanted, at which point he became enraged and called her a “tease” and a “bitch,” she alleges.
The next day, she says, Noth called and threatened to ruin her music career if she told anyone what happened.
“I was afraid to come forward because of Mr. Noth’s power and his threats to ruin my career,” Gentile said at the press conference, adding that she was going public now to support the women who spoke out before her anonymously.
Two women independently approached The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month, around the premiere of the SATC reboot And Just Like That…, to claim Noth had raped them. One woman claimed the actor assaulted her in a Los Angeles apartment building in 2004; the other in his New York apartment in 2015. Two days later, a third woman told The Daily Beast that Noth had kissed and groped her against her will at Da Marino in 2010.
Noth dismissed the first two allegations as “categorically false,” claiming the encounters were consensual and questioning the timing of the accusations.
“These stories could’ve been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago—no always means no—that is a line I did not cross,” he told THR. “The encounters were consensual. It’s difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I don’t know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women.”
Reached for comment about the third woman, Noth’s publicist told The Daily Beast that Noth “denies this as ever happening and has no idea who this woman is.”
Since the allegations began piling up, Noth has been dropped from the CBS show The Equalizer, which debuted earlier this year. Peloton also pulled online ads featuring Noth that premiered following his SATC character’s death on one of their exercise bikes in And Just Like That…
Noth’s three most prominent co-stars in the reboot—Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristen Davis—released a joint statement this week voicing their support for his accusers.
“We support the women who have come forward and shared their painful experiences,” they said. “We know it must be a very difficult thing to do and we commend them for it.”
In the press conference, Allred urged the actresses—and Noth himself—to support the passage of the Adult Survivor’s Act, a New York bill that would grant survivors of sexual abuse a one-year “look-back window” in which to file civil claims outside the statute of limitations.
Because Gentile claims her assault happened nearly 20 years ago, she is currently time-barred from filing a suit in New York. She, too, expressed her support for the Adult Survivor’s Act, saying that she and her fellow accusers “should have our day in court to seek to hold Mr. Noth accountable for what he did.”
