In an essay published Saturday in the Telegraph, The Vampire Diaries actress Alice Evans ponders the professional consequences of rejecting Harvey Weinstein’s advances in 2002, on both her career and that of her husband, UnREAL actor Ioan Gruffudd. Evans recounts the evening at the Cannes Film Festival when the former studio head approached her with a drink. “Oddly, despite having heard endless stories about massages and hand-jobs in hotel rooms, it doesn’t even cross my mind — not for a second — that he might try the same on me,” she says. Weinstein complimented Gruffudd’s recent audition for one of his projects, then asked Evans to accompany him to the hotel bathroom. “Just go. I’m right behind you. I want to touch your tits. Kiss you a little,” he allegedly said. When Evans begged off, Weinstein told her, “Let’s hope it all works out for your boyfriend.”
The 102 Dalmatians star immediately questioned her decision to reject the now-disgraced producer. The next day, a former member of Gruffudd’s management team informed her that her refusal to let Weinstein grope her in a bathroom may have torpedoed her boyfriend’s chances at the role. “I was worried you might say that,” she remarked, when Evans said she had turned Weinstein down. “They called this morning. It’s not going Ioan’s way.”
Writes the actress, “I was never again considered for a Weinstein film, and neither was Ioan. I’ll never know if my refusal to be sexually available for Mr. Weinstein at the moment he fancied his little fix had me blacklisted, or whether I’m inflating my own importance in a much bigger picture.” Evans goes on to praise the dozens of women who have since come forward to reveal Weinstein’s pattern of sexual harassment and assault. She writes, “I’m heartened by the many who have spoken out in recent days not just against Harvey, but a culture of sexual bullying within the industry that’s neither a ‘game’ nor part of some quaint movie tradition but unacceptable on a very basic human level.”