Brad Pitt on Why He 'Confronted' Harvey Weinstein About Alleged Gwyneth Paltrow Incident
Brad Pitt says he was simply looking out for former girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow when he confronted Harvey Weinstein after she claimed the producer had made “a pass” at her.
The Ad Astra actor, 55, recently spoke to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who had him recall the incident Paltrow, 46, spoke about in a May 2018 interview with Howard Stern.
“At that moment, I was just a boy from the Ozarks on the playground and that’s how we confronted things,” Pitt said when asked what had made him challenge the powerful producer.
Paltrow alleged Weinstein sexually harassed her in the early days of her career when she was dating Pitt. At the time, the actress said she told Pitt what allegedly happened.
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“I just wanted to make sure nothing was going to happen further because she was going to do two films [with Weinstein],” Pitt told Amanpour. “I think the interesting thing is that we, Hollywood specifically, but the workplace, men and women’s dynamics is being re-calibrated, re-calibrated in a very good way that is long overdue. And I do think that’s an important story to tell.”
Speaking to Stern, Paltrow said she was “blindsided” by the alleged incident with Weinstein. “It was weird. I was alone in a room with him. It was out of the blue. I was shocked,” she said.
The Avengers: Endgame actress told Pitt about what allegedly happened at the time, saying the actor confronted Weinstein and told him to never touch Paltrow again.
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“I told him right away and I was very shaken by the whole thing,” Paltrow told Stern. “We were at the opening of Hamlet on Broadway. Harvey was there and Brad Pitt — it was like the equivalent of throwing him against the wall, energetically.”
“He said, ‘If you ever make her feel uncomfortable again, I’ll kill you,'” she recalled Pitt saying to Weinstein. “Or something like that.”
Paltrow said she is still thankful for Pitt’s actions.
“It was so fantastic,” she said. “He leveraged his fame and power to protect me at a time when I didn’t have fame or power yet.”
Paltrow first opened up about her alleged experience in a 2017 New York Times report, one of the first of a long list of women who have accused Weinstein of sexual harassment.
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After the alleged incident, the producer then called her and threatened her not to speak to anyone else about it, Paltrow told the NYT. “I thought he was going to fire me,” she said. “He screamed at me for a long time. It was brutal.”
Weinstein has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex and retaliation against women for refusing his advance
He is set to go to trial in January 2020 for charges of rape, predatory sexual assault and criminal sexual act based on the accusations of two women, according to The Washington Post. In March, multiple reports revealed that Weinstein had reached a tentative $44 million agreement that would see him compensate women who have sued him for alleged sexual misconduct and board members of his former movie company while settling a pending civil-rights lawsuit by the New York State Attorney General’s Office. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Ad Astra is now playing.
