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Gwyneth Paltrow Says ‘Bully’ Harvey Weinstein Harassed Her

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Updated on July 6, 2023

See more articles on:Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Russell Crowe

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Gwyneth Paltrow has spoken out about dealing with Harvey Weinstein, calling him a “bully” and revealing that she once felt obligated to confront him.

In a recent interview with Variety, the actress talked about her time on “Shakespeare in Love,” which won her a Best Actress Oscar and won Weinstein Best Picture.

Paltrow claims that landing the part and all the plaudits that came with it meant she had to work with Harvey Weinstein once more, barely four years after he summoned her to his hotel room, placed his hands on her, and suggested they go to the bedroom for massages.

Despite the fact that Paltrow has stated that Weinstein never sexually assaulted her again (due in part to then-boyfriend Brad Pitt threatening to kill him), she did not make the decision to work for him again lightly.

“He was a bully,” Paltrow said in an interview with Variety published Tuesday. “I never had a problem standing up to him. I wasn’t scared of him. I also felt for a period of time, I was the consumer face of Miramax, and I felt it was my duty to push back against him. We had a lot of fights.”

“He was a very difficult boss. It was a fraught relationship.”

“It was a fraught relationship. We would get in knock-down, drag-out fights.”

“I remember once, my mother [Blythe Danner] walked in a room, and I was yelling at him about something. She was like, ‘Who was that on the phone?’” Paltrow says that when she told Danner, her mother said, “’Oh, my goodness, good for you. Stand up for yourself.’”

Weinstein was expelled from the Academy in 2017 after a series of women accused him of rape and sexual harassment.

The actress claims Weinstein failed to pay her a portion of the money she earned from her role in the Jane Austen adaption Emma in 1996.

“I got him to pay me something,” she alleges after pushing back on receiving her money. “I remember I got this legal letter that said, ‘This is not an acknowledgment that we owe you this money, but here’s a check.’”

Paltrow also claimed that she had to struggle to ensure that the role of William Shakespeare in the film was cast appropriately.

“Harvey wanted Ben Affleck to take over and play Shakespeare at the last minute,” Paltrow recounted. “I said, ‘No, you can’t do that. You have to have an English person.’”

Ben Affleck, who starred in “Good Will Hunting,” was eventually cast in a different character, while Ralph Fiennes was cast in the Shakespeare part.

‘I definitely screamed at the top of my lungs when I got it,’ Fiennes recalled of landing the part, adding that he had no idea Paltrow had endorsed him.

‘That’s news to me. I feel – wow – really indebted to Gwyneth and John,’ he added.

During their wedding ceremony, Paltrow acknowledged that her Oscar-winning performance in Shakespeare In Love inspired her husband Brad Falchuk.

“It’s no accident that I portrayed this muse,” the actress explained, “because that’s who I am to him and his view is that’s who I am in real life.”

“Gwyneth Paltrow is an excellent actor and a fantastic person, who does so well when on the right project,” Weinstein said Variety in response to the casting accusations. “The only other contenders for the role of Will Shakespeare were Russell Crowe and Ethan Hawke, no one else. Ben Affleck did a terrific job as Ned Alleyn, which is the role he was considered for.”

“I never had a problem standing up to him,” Paltrow stated of Weinstein in the end. “I wasn’t scared of him. I also felt for a period of time, I was the consumer face of Miramax, and I felt it was my duty to push back against him.”