One of the most horrifying things about the #MeToo movement’s rise and the outing of Harvey Weinstein as a serial rapist and predator was the dawning realization of just how many women saw their careers destroyed after they were assaulted, raped or harassed by Weinstein. He was a one-man wrecking ball to so many talented women. Even now, years later, we’re still hearing about actresses who had their careers derailed by Weinstein after falling victim to his predations. Well, here’s another name to add to the most depressing list you’ve ever seen: Julia Ormond. In the 1990s, Julia Ormond was everywhere, she was the next big thing, she was the go-to romantic heroine. In the span of about two years, she starred in Legends of the Fall, the Sabrina remake, and First Knight. But something happened after that and her career was never really the same. Sure, she popped up in interesting projects here and there (a brilliant recurring character on Mad Men, a guest-starring role in Nurse Jackie) but after all of that attention and focus, what happened? Harvey Weinstein. And CAA.
Julia Ormond, the English actress best known for her roles in ’90s films such as “Legends of the Fall,” “First Knight” and “Smilla’s Sense of Snow,” is suing Harvey Weinstein for sexual battery. Ormond is additionally suing CAA, The Walt Disney Company and Miramax.
While Weinstein has been named as the defendant in numerous sexual assault lawsuits since exposes published in 2017 in The New York Times and New Yorker uncovered his alleged patterns of misconduct toward dozens of women in the entertainment industry, it is rare for business partners that profited from Weinstein’s work to be named as defendants for supposedly enabling his behavior.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday morning in New York Supreme Court, obtained by Variety, Ormond claims that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 1995 after a business dinner when he lured her into giving him a massage, climbed on top of her, masturbated and forced her to give him oral sex.
After the alleged assault, Ormond informed her agents Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane what had happened with Weinstein, according to the lawsuit, which states that the CAA agents cautioned her from speaking out and did not protect her. (Lourd and Huvane, who today are co-chairmen of CAA, are not named as defendants, but are frequently mentioned throughout Ormond’s suit as her representatives at the time.) Ormond is suing CAA for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.
Miramax, the company that Weinstein co-founded with his brother Bob, and The Walt Disney Company, which owned Miramax in the 90s, are being sued for negligent supervision and retention. (Numerous former Miramax and Disney executives are cited in the lawsuit, including Michael Eisner, who was Disney’s CEO, at the time, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was chairman of Disney, though they are not defendants. The Disney execs mentioned in the lawsuit are no longer working at the company.)
“The men at CAA who represented Ormond knew about Weinstein. So too did Weinstein’s employers at Miramax and Disney,” the lawsuit states. “Brazenly, none of these prominent companies warned Ormond that Weinstein had a history of assaulting women because he was too important, too powerful, and made them too much money.”
[From Variety]
While CAA hushed up what they could in real time as the stories were breaking in 2017, so many survivors had very similar stories, that after Weinstein raped them or assaulted them or harassed them or chased them around a hotel room, they called their CAA agent and told that person what Weinstein had done to them. And for years, CAA just… continued to send all of these actresses into hotel rooms with Harvey Weinstein, like CAA was procuring victims for Weinstein. Think about Ormond’s story in chronological context: this was around the same time Weinstein attacked Gwyneth Paltrow (a CAA client) in a hotel room, it was around the same time Weinstein assaulted Rose McGowan (and she was one of the few to speak out at the same time), and it was after Weinstein brutally raped Annabella Sciorra in her home. Oh, Ashley Judd – a CAA client – was also harassed by Weinstein around this same time. Ormond also spoke directly to Variety:
In a phone interview, Ormond tells Variety that she is speaking out because she wants to be part of the change that can make Hollywood and other workplaces safer from sexual predators.
“I am coming forward with my story now publicly because I feel as if we still need systemic change, and I feel that we need accountability from enablers, in order to get there,” Ormond tells Variety. “I feel that this is what happened with me.”
Ormond is filing her suit under the Adult Survivors Act, which creates a look-back window outside the statute of limitations. The Adult Survivors Act was passed after the #MeToo movement, and Ormond says she’s able to share her story because of the courage of other women and survivors. Ormond hopes that by sharing her story, she can make an impact in corporate transparency regarding reporting structures in the workplace and the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims.
“Obviously, Harvey Weinstein is in jail and is going to be in jail for a very long time. I personally don’t believe that Harvey could have done this without enablers. And for me, that is the layer that you have to get down to, in terms of the root cause,” Ormond says. “If you think about it. If there had been best practices and Harvey Weinstein had been called out at the start after his first sexual harassment or his first sexual assault, he could have learned different behaviors, and potentially all of the people that followed wouldn’t have been harmed. But he wasn’t. And there’s a reason for that.”
[From Variety]
Yep. She’s absolutely right, and she’s incredibly brave to not only come forward with her story about Weinstein, but to actually sue his Hollywood enablers. She also told Variety that after she told Huvane and Lourd (and they failed to protect her) she really never spoke about it again until Me Too started. That’s when she told her family and began studying her options for how to get justice and accountability.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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