Rose McGowan, the actress whose allegation that she was raped by Harvey Weinstein helped open the Hollywood sexual-abuse and harassment scandal floodgates, has sharply criticized the involvement of one of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies, CAA, in the Time’s Up initiative.
In an angry tweet Tuesday morning, the actress accused CAA of being a “company of pimps that sent so many into the monster’s lair,” along with a picture of a flier for “Time’s Up gathering” being held simultaneously at three offices of CAA tomorrow: in London, New York, and Los Angeles.
The tweet—and the avalanche of both highly critical and hugely supportive responses it inspired—is another sign of a split that has emerged between McGowan and advocates loyal to her—the #RoseArmy—and the larger Time’s Up movement, which would arguably not have come into existence had it not been for McGowan’s revelations.
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The role of agents as enablers of the sexual abuse of actors, and the troubling question of how much they knew, was examined in a recent Vanity Fair piece, which detailed, for example, how Tamara Holder, a Fox News contributor, was urged to keep quiet by her agent after a senior executive tried to force her to perform oral sex on him.
Holder has criticized as hypocrisy the involvement of Hollywood agencies in the Time’s Up campaign.
Other actresses have suggested that they think their agencies acted rashly by sending them to private meetings with powerful men. Speaking to The New York Times, Gwyneth Paltrow described heading to a meeting with Harvey Weinstein at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel early on in her career.
She made it clear that she thought she would be safe at the meeting because her agency CAA had sent her. “It’s on the fax, it’s from CAA,” she told the Times, referring to her schedule that day.
The meeting ended with Weinstein placing his hands on her and suggesting they head to the bedroom for massages, she said.
“I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified,” she said in an interview.
She refused his advances, she said, and confided in Brad Pitt, her boyfriend at the time. Pitt confronted Weinstein, and soon after, the producer allegedly warned her not to tell anyone else of the incident.
“I thought he was going to fire me,” she said.
Today’s tweet comes after McGowan was highly critical both of the Hollywood agencies who she claims “are guilty of human trafficking” for allegedly sending actresses to meet Weinstein, and of the actresses who wore black to the Golden Globes ceremony Sunday night, dismissing their gesture as a stunt and “Hollywood fakery.” After all, many of Weinstein’s most vocal accusers, including McGowan, Asia Argento, Mira Sorvino, and Rosanna Arquette, were reportedly not invited to the Golden Globes despite its #MeToo theme.
McGowan previously had a Twitter dispute with Amber Tamblyn after they disagreed over the plan by actresses to wear black to the Golden Globes, with McGowan suggesting that Meryl Streep and other actresses whom she believed knew about Weinstein all wear Marchesa to the event, the label run by Weinstein’s estranged wife Georgina Chapman.
She subsequently pulled back from the remark, saying: “The Marchesa line was beneath me and I’m sorry for that... There is no map for this road I’m on, I will fuck up. Peace be with you, go with Goddess.”
