Back in October, Gwyneth Paltrow spoke to the New York Times on the record about her experience with disgraced film mogul, Harvey Weinstein, and how her then-boyfriend, Brad Pitt, intervened to keep Weinstein from sexually harassing her again.
The actress explained that before filming commenced on the 1996 adaption of Emma, she was summoned to Weinstein's suite at the Peninsula Beverly Hills under the guise of a work meeting.
While the two talked shop to begin with, the episode culminated in Weinstein laying his hands on Paltrow, who was just 22-years-old at the time, suggesting that they engage in his pre-mating ritual: massages. "I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified"," she said. And whilst Paltrow spurned Weinstein's advances, she was understandably shaken by the confrontation, alleging "I thought he was going to fire me".
Now, in a new interview with Howard Stern, the Oscar-winning actress spoke candidly about what Weinstein did, and how Pitt reacted.
"We had one instance in a hotel room where [Weinstein] made a pass at me," she recalled. "And then I really kind of stood up to him. I told my boyfriend at the time, Brad Pitt."
Paltrow explained that she did not anticipate what eventually unfolded in that hotel room. "[I] definitely did not [have any vibe he was like this]. It was out of the blue. I was blindsided. He was fully clothed [when he said ‘let’s go take a massage’]...no bathrobe. I was shocked."
"So what happened was I told him [Brad] right away, and I was very shaken by the whole thing. And I had two movies, I signed up to do two movies with him. I was afraid [the films would be cancelled]. And Brad Pitt, we were at the opening of Hamlet on Broadway…and Harvey was there, and Brad Pitt, it was like the equivalent of throwing him against the wall, you know, energetically."
"[Brad] came back and told me exactly what he said [to Harvey]," Paltrow continued. "He said, ‘If you ever make her feel uncomfortable again, I’ll kill you,’ or something like that."
"It was so fantastic because what he did was he leveraged his fame and power to protect me at a time when I didn’t have fame or power yet."
Paltrow also discussed how nervous she was about going public with her story. "It was a really big decision," she asserted. "Looking back at it now, it’s much different."
"The landscape has completely changed so now it seems like a no brainer, but at the time, the floodgates hadn’t opened and not only did this story break, but it changed the culture completely. So I had been talking to Jodi and Megan all summer before the piece came out and I hadn’t decided whether I would go on the record or not. I didn’t tell anyone all summer that I was talking to Jodi and Megan. I didn’t tell anyone."
In related news, Gwyneth Paltrow has described her relationship with Ben Affleck as a 'lesson'...