Meryl Streep Responds to Rose McGowan: 'I Wasn't Deliberately Silent. I Didn't Know.'

Meryl Streep responded to Rose McGowan, who criticized her for reportedly planning a silent protest against sexual harassment at the Golden Globes by wearing all black.

Streep reiterated that she did not know about Harvey Weinstein‘s sexual misconduct and does not “tacitly approve of rape.”

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“It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others,” Streep said in a statement her publicist released to The Huffington Post. “I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know. I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening.”

Streep said she does not have a close relationship with Weinstein, adding that she does not now where he lives and has never invited him to her her home. The only time she went to his office was to meet Music Of The Heart director Wes Craven in 1998.

“HW distributed movies I made with other people,” Streep continued. “HW was not a filmmaker; he was often a producer, primarily a marketer of films made by other people- some of them great, some not great. But not every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW distributed knew he abused women, or that he raped Rose in the 90s, other women before and others after, until they told us. We did not know that women’s silence was purchased by him and his enablers.”

Streep said she gave McGowan her personal phone number with the help of mutual friends, hoping McGowan would reach out. “She did not, but I hope she reads this,” Streep said.

“I am truly sorry she sees me as an adversary, because we are both, together with all the women in our business, standing in defiance of the same implacable foe: a status quo that wants so badly to return to the bad old days, the old ways where women were used, abused and refused entry into the decision-making, top levels of the industry. That’s where the cover-ups convene,” Streep concluded. “Those rooms must be disinfected, and integrated, before anything even begins to change.”

On Dec. 16, McGowan responded to a PEOPLE report that Streep and other actresses planned to wear all black to the Golden Globes as a silent protest.

“Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black [at the Golden Globes] in a silent protest,” McGowan wrote in a now-deleted tweet. “YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.”

Marchesa is the label Weinstein started with his now-estranged wife, Georgina Chapman.

Amber Tamblyn also responded to McGowan’s tweet, writing that it was “beneath” her to suggest they all wear Marchesa. “Rose McGowan is a friend and while I support her kind of movement, I do not support any woman (or man) shaming or taunting the movements of other women who are trying to create change,” Tamblyn wrote.

Below is Streep’s complete statement to the Huffington Post:

I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know. I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening.

I don’t know where Harvey lives, nor has he ever been to my home.

I have never in my life been invited to his hotel room.

I have been to his office once, for a meeting with Wes Craven for “Music of the Heart” in 1998.

HW distributed movies I made with other people.

HW was not a filmmaker; he was often a producer, primarily a marketer of films made by other people- some of them great, some not great. But not every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW distributed knew he abused women, or that he raped Rose in the 90s, other women before and others after, until they told us. We did not know that women’s silence was purchased by him and his enablers.

HW needed us not to know this, because our association with him bought him credibility, an ability to lure young, aspiring women into circumstances where they would be hurt.

He needed me much more than I needed him and he made sure I didn’t know. Apparently he hired ex Mossad operators to protect this information from becoming public. Rose and the scores of other victims of these powerful, moneyed, ruthless men face an adversary for whom Winning, at any and all costs, is the only acceptable outcome. That’s why a legal defense fund for victims is currently being assembled to which hundreds of good hearted people in our business will contribute, to bring down the bastards, and help victims fight this scourge within.

Rose assumed and broadcast something untrue about me, and I wanted to let her know the truth. Through friends who know her, I got my home phone number to her the minute I read the headlines. I sat by that phone all day yesterday and this morning, hoping to express both my deep respect for her and others’ bravery in exposing the monsters among us, and my sympathy for the untold, ongoing pain she suffers. No one can bring back what entitled bosses like Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, and HW took from the women who endured attacks on their bodies and their ability to make a living.. And I hoped that she would give me a hearing. She did not, but I hope she reads this.

I am truly sorry she sees me as an adversary, because we are both, together with all the women in our business, standing in defiance of the same implacable foe: a status quo that wants so badly to return to the bad old days, the old ways where women were used, abused and refused entry into the decision-making, top levels of the industry. That’s where the cover-ups convene. Those rooms must be disinfected, and integrated, before anything even begins to change.”