The author and journalist who accused Michael Douglas of sexual harassment is sharing details about her side of the allegations against the actor for the first time.
Susan Braudy opened up about her alleged experiences with Douglas, now 73, in a detailed written account in The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday. Through reported meticulous record-keeping and a timeline of her employment, Braudy relayed her side of the story to the publication.
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Braudy says that she worked for Douglas in the late ’80s, when she was in her 40s. She was hired to run the New York office of Stonebridge Productions, a production company launched by Douglas. Her duties were to “read scripts, hire and supervise screenwriters, and perhaps most important, to babysit Michael in his apartment,” she said in her account.
Braudy claimed she endured “sexual harassment by Douglas that included near-constant profane and sexually charged dialogue, demeaning comments about her appearance, graphic discussions regarding his mistresses and more.”
During a one-on-one script meeting in his apartment, which functioned as his part-time office at the time, Braudy claimed Douglas masturbated in front of her. Douglas vehemently denied this accusation in his interview with Deadline last week when he tried to get ahead of the allegations.
“Michael unzipped his chinos and I registered something amiss,” she wrote about the alleged 1989 incident. “I peered at him and saw he’d inserted both hands into his unzipped pants. I realized to my horror that he was rubbing his private parts. Within seconds his voice cracked and it appeared to me he’d had an orgasm.”
Braudy said she left the apartment immediately. “I said nothing. I was surprised I wasn’t falling to pieces even though I was humiliated. I realized he thought he could do anything he wanted because he was so much more powerful than I was. Michael ran barefoot after me to the elevator, zipping his fly and buckling his belt. ‘Hey, thank you, you’re good. You helped me, thank you, thank you,’” she wrote.
She told three people about the incident: Michael Wolff (who wrote the controversial book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House), former Newsweek journalist Lynn Povich and film editor Joseph Weintraub, who currently lives with Braudy, according to THR.
Brady said from that point forward, her relationship with Douglas deteriorated. She says that was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and she refused. Six months later, she was fired.
In his preemptive denial to Deadline on Jan. 9, Douglas said, “I’m bewildered why, after 32 years, this is coming out, now.”
He explained that he was aware that a former employee, whom he did not name, was planning to come forward with damaging accusations against him, and decided to give his account of the events before her story came out in the press. While Douglas admitted he might have used “coarse language with my friends” and that Braudy might have overheard that language, he denied “being a sexual harasser.”
Responding to the actor’s denial, Braudy told THR, “I believe this is part of the problem, as is his pretext of victimization. These are some reasons why so many women don’t come forward with their stories — Lord knows it’s taken 30 years and a movement for me to gather my courage.
