When the dozens of sexual harassment and assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein first broke, Charlize Theron said she “wasn’t surprised” that the producer would abuse his power. In a new interview with the New York Times, she gets a little more specific about how he harassed and meddled with Miramax’s stars. “Pitting women against each other? [Weinstein] was really, really good at that. There was a lot of, like, ‘Well, I’m talking to Gwyneth for this movie …’ One of his lines was that Renée [Zellweger] and I slept with him to get jobs,” Theron told the Times. “There was no limit to him. Even in the sexual favors, he would still pit us against each other.”
In a class-action lawsuit filed in December 2017, the actress Melissa Sagemiller said that Weinstein frequently boasted about having slept with famous actresses to persuade women into sexual favors. At the time, Weinstein denied that he lied about having sex with Theron, Zellweger, or Gwyneth Paltrow, saying that he “has never stated he slept with any of them.”
