Yesterday on social media, actress and #MeToo activist Rose McGowan, accused Sideways and The Descendants director Alexander Payne of sexual misconduct when she was 15-years-old.
McGowan, who was integral in bringing down producer Harvey Weinstein and launching the #metoo movement, made her accusations in a series of statements posted to her Twitter account early Monday.
“Alexander Payne. You sat me down & played a soft-core porn movie you directed for Showtime under a different name. I still remember your apartment in Silverlake. You are very well-endowed,” McGowan tweeted, adding, “You left me on a street corner afterwards. I was 15.”
McGowan followed up with another tweet saying “I just want an acknowledgment and an apology. I do not want to destroy. This was me at 15.”
Payne, who is 59, would have been around 27-years-old at the time of McGowan’s accusation.
In a WhatsApp conversation with Variety, McGowan expanded on her tweet, “I feel very badly for my 15 year-old self. I had auditioned for him. He took me home afterwards. I quit acting after that and then was discovered by Ilene Staple (a friend of Gregg Araki) 6 years later.”
She added, ” It wasn’t until after the HW [Harvey Weinstein] stories came out that I reframed the Payne of it all. I had for years looked at it as a sexual encounter, not understanding what it really was. It was a grooming situation. The first time I’d been shown a straight porn.”
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The actress has become a leading figure in the #MeToo movement since she accused Weinstein of raping her at a Sundance Film Festival hotel in the late ’90s.
Payne won two Oscars for best adapted screenplay: for Sideways in 2005 and The Descendants in 2012. Currently, Payne has a series in the works with HBO and Sky, Landscapers,which is set to star The Crown’s Olivia Colman.
In a documented 2018 conversation with Ronan Farrow, McGowan alluded to the attack In a conversation with investigative journalist Ronan Farrow in early 2018 at the 92nd Y, McGowan spoke about a sexual encounter with a “very famous” man when she was 15, and said she recently learned it was statutory rape and that she would eventually come forward with the man’s name when she was ready.
“He took me home, after he met me, and showed me a soft-porn movie he’d made for Showtime, under a different name, of course,” McGowan said during the conversation with Farrow. “And then he had sex with me. And then he left me next to Tropical in Silver Lake, standing on a street corner.”
Payne has yet to comment.
SOURCE: Twitter
