Rose McGowan Says She's Not Actually a Republican: Her Tweets Otherwise Were Part of a '$200 Bet'

Actress Rose McGowan is explaining those January tweets in which she claimed she was a Republican, saying now that the Twitter thread was part of a $200 bet with her brother to see whether she could masquerade as a conservative for three months.

The former Charmed star appeared on Tuesday’s episode of the Shut Up Evan podcast with Evan Ross Katz, and the pair discussed everything from getting closure in the Harvey Weinstein case to that now-deleted Twitter thread she posted early this year where she stated she was a registered Republican and “cannot vote Democrat.”

“It was a bet,” McGowan, 46, told Katz.

“I couldn’t say that on Twitter,” she continued. “Now, the behind the scenes story is that I, why at this point in time in my life, I decided to do this and take this bet from a brother of mine who said, ‘I dare you to be a Republican for three months.’ And I thought about it and he said, ‘I’ll bet you $200 that you can’t,’ and I said ‘I’ll bet you $200 that I can.’ Granted, late-night ideas aren’t always the best.”

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The tweets led to backlash from some of her followers, who criticized McGowan — a leading voice in the #MeToo movement when in 2017 she said Weinstein had assaulted her — for embracing the Republicans. President Donald Trump, the party’s leader, has also been accused of rape, which he denies. (Weinstein also denied McGowan’s allegation.)

Talking about the bet with her brother this week on Katz’s podcast, McGowan said the idea of saying she was Republican was to shut down her conservative critics.

“In my mind at that time I was like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to blow them. I’ll be like, I’m a Republican. What are you going to say to me now? Am I still snowflake? Am I still a libtard idiot?’ You know what I mean?” McGowan told Katz in the hour-long interview, released Tuesday morning.

“It is a really weird f—— thing to be a Republican for three months,” McGowan said. “It feels strange in your body. It feels very cellular.”

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McGowan initially claimed on Twitter that she had overreacted to the U.S.’ earlier conflict with Iran, following Trump’s surprise airstrike that killed the controversial Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in early January.

“Ok, so I freaked out because we may have any impending war,” she wrote on Twitter then. “Sometimes it’s okay to freak out on those in power. It’s our right.”

On Tuesday, McGowan reiterated her hatred for 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, saying she “can’t stand” Clinton. She’s also said in the past that she “loathes” Trump.

“Do I want America to burn down and start over? Part of me? Absolutely,” she told Katz. “Do I wish it the best on the other hand? Yes.”