Meryl Streep slams ‘pathetic’ Weinstein for using her name

Team Udayavani, Feb 23, 2018, 4:00 PM IST

Los Angeles: Veteran actor Meryl Streep has slammed disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein for dragging her name in a sexual misconduct lawsuit against him.

Weinstein had mentioned the names of prominent Hollywood A-listers, including Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lawrence in his defense filing against a class-action sexual misconduct lawsuit to prove that not all women had a negative experience of working with him.

He had claimed that Streep had stated publicly that “Weinstein had always been respectful to her in their working relationship.” The document also included comments Lawrence made to Oprah Winfrey where she had said the producer had “only ever been nice” to her.

Streep, in a statement through her representative Hannah Donohue, blasted Weinstein for including her name in the filing, saying it was “pathetic and exploitive”, reported Entertainment Weekly. “Harvey Weinstein’s attorneys’ use of my (true) statement – that he was not sexually transgressive or physically abusive in our business relationship – as evidence that he was not abusive with many other women is pathetic and exploitive,” Streep said in the statement.

“The criminal actions he is accused of conducting on the bodies of these women are his responsibility, and if there is any justice left in the system he will pay for them – regardless of how many good movies, made by many good people, Harvey was lucky enough to have acquired or financed,” she added.

The lawsuit against Weinstein was filed by six female actors claiming that the producer, along with The Weinstein Company, used his power to bully women and cover up the cases of sexual misconduct.