Meryl Streep Denounces Harvey Weinstein for Using Her to Dismiss a Lawsuit
While Meryl Streep said that Harvey Weinstein had never attempted anything with her, and that their working relationship had always been cordial, she had no problem slamming him when tales of his exploits were made public fall of last year. Weinstein’s lawyers attempted to use the fact that she herself had no Weinstein story to dismiss a lawsuit filed by six women, whose attorneys claim Weinstein’s predatory behavior essentially amounts to a criminal organization.
On Tuesday, Weinstein’s lawyers asked a federal judge to dismiss a racketeering lawsuit against him filed by the lawyers for Louisette Geiss, Katherine Kendall, Zoe Brock, Sarah Ann Masse, Melissa Sagemiller, and Nannette Klatt. The case alleges that “the Weinstein Sexual Enterprise” was a criminal organization given that Weinstein’s victims numbered in the “hundreds.” If that was the case, Weinstein’s legal team said, then it would have to apply to “all women who ever met with Weinstein, regardless of whether they claimed to have suffered any identifiable harm,” and given actresses like Streep, who have no horror story of their own, Weinstein’s behavior can’t be treated that way.
In her statement on Wednesday, Streep slammed Weinstein for trying to use her to get out of the lawsuit:
Harvey Weinstein’s attorneys’ use of my (true) statement — that he was not sexually transgressive or physically abusive in our business relationship — as evidence that he was not abusive with many OTHER women is pathetic and exploitive. The criminal actions he is accused of conducting on the bodies of these women are his responsibility, and if there is any justice left in the system he will pay for them — regardless of how many good movies, made by many good people, Harvey was lucky enough to have acquired or financed.
Streep has issued statements about Weinstein before, denouncing his behavior while saying that she and with many others in Hollywood, according to her, had no idea what he had been doing.