Jen Thomas
Charlize Theron insists she won't name the director who sexually harassed her, but says he 'panicked' and reached out after she went public about it.
The actor has starred in films like Bombshell which focus on sexual harassment, as well as the likes of Monster and Mad Max: Fury Road.
She opened up about the incident back in 2019, saying a director had behaved inappropriately towards her in the 1990s and sexually harassed her.
Charlize has even said the director in question has now sent her a letter trying to justify his actions. She made the shock revelation while appearing as a guest on podcast Call Her Daddy, talking to host Alex Cooper.
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She first opened up about the incident to NPR back in 2019, saying a 'very famous director' was wearing only silk pyjamas when he answered the door to her, before he 'put his hand' on her knee.
At the time, the actress told NPR: “[He] offered me a drink and rubbed my knee. I was just starting out; I didn’t know the ins and outs, and said to myself as I was driving there at 9pm … ‘Maybe that’s how they do it in the movie industry?'”
She added: “You don’t [know what to do] … if you haven’t experienced it, it’s a very difficult thing to wrap your head around. I wasn’t even fully convinced this was sexual harassment until later in my career.
Podcast host Cooper asked Theron how she wound up at the director's house in 1994.
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Charlize revealed she thought it was an audition, but she confessed 'I didn’t know what the audition process looked like'.
“I didn’t know how you went about being an actor… [my agency] said there was a casting for this movie and you’ll have to go on a Saturday night. It was this director’s house. The little voice inside me definitely said, ‘This isn’t right.’ But then, the other voice in me says, ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe it is right.’”
She clarified that her decision not to name and shame the director wasn't out of a desire to protect him, but because doing so would make the 'story about him' instead.
“It’s not because I’m protecting him or anything,” she insisted, revealing he had 'panicked' previously when she went public about what had happened.
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Horrifyingly, she said the director tried to justify his actions and blamed Charlize, saying she 'misunderstood' it, in a 'classic' attempt at redirection.
“He got nervous for a little bit. He heard me tell the story, and he knew it was about him, and he wrote me a pretend letter trying to explain his behaviour and how I must have misunderstood it, which is classic, isn’t it? It’s so classic."
Charlize responded angrily on the podcast, slamming the unnamed director as a 'scumbag'.
“I won’t even f**king say your name because you know you’re the scumbag. You know it’s you. If anybody ever asked me about him, I would be completely honest — and he knows that. I kind of like that he’s got to be on a hot seat. He doesn’t know when it’s going to come. I kind of like that a little more.”
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She railed against his actions, insisting: “I will not let a motherf***er f**k with me any day of the week, but when somebody catches you off guard like that… I was never going to get a part that night. I knew it as soon as I left. I wasn’t there because I had some value that I was going to bring to his movie. I was only valued for one thing.”
Charlize confronted the director eight years after the incident, when he offered her a job, but she said he wasn't having any of it, according to NPR.
"[He] just moved on from the conversation, he just didn’t want to address it. At that moment, it was clear to me that it wasn’t his first time and that he had been doing this before and that other women had called him out. His way of handling it was just to talk over it and about the project," she recalled.
“Unfortunately, it was not the moment I so wanted. There was no reward in it… I’ve heard this repeatedly in hearing other women’s stories, and that is the unfortunate thing about sexual harassment. You never get that moment where you feel like the tables are reversed and now he’s finally getting it.”