Arsenio Hall recently revealed that he dodged a project with Harvey Weinstein ahead of the former Hollywood exec’s sexual assault scandal.
During a conversation with PopCulture.com, Hall said that people “have to start putting our foot down,” explaining that the initial meeting he had with Weinstein did not leave him with a good impression.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“I did something once that… it was a complicated moment. I got a call from my agent and they said, ‘There is this concept that Harvey Weinstein wants to produce and he wants you to host it.’ And here’s the deal, it was before all the Weinstein stuff broke real hard like it is now, but I know who he is. I know his history here.”
Despite being aware of rumors about the film and TV producers, Hall says he agreed to the meeting against his better judgment and was quickly assured that his gut feeling was right.
“I went over one day and I sat in his office and I hung out and when I got home that night I told my agent, I said, ‘I shouldn’t have gone to the meeting. I know who this guy is. I know … he’s not only mean to women, he’s horrible to men. He’s horrible to young people walking around the office.’ He’s just a horrible guy and for the first time I did something that I think a lot of us has to do, I told my agent I’m not going to do the job,” the former late-night talk show host said.
Right around the same time, Hall was offered another hosting opportunity, working with country music songstress Kelsea Ballerini as the presenters on ABC’s music performance series Greatest Hits. He says that he took advantage of that offer so that he could refuse Weinstein’s offer.
“As a matter of fact I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anybody, I took that ABC job with Miss Ballerini so that I could tell Harvey I was unavailable for the summer,” Hall confessed, later saying, “Sometimes we want to look the other way at the source, but I did the right thing.”
Hall goes on to say that it was only “a month later everything came tumbling down.”
“I think it started with Mia Farrow’s son, Ronan Farrow, the journalist, I think when that came out then it started tumbling down,” Hall continued, referring to the New York Times and New Yorker articles that were published in 2017. “And then I was kind of proud of myself…I got enough money, I can turn down a bag every now and then.”
“This whole story is just to say in our society sometimes we look the other way and do what’s easy and convenient,” Hall added. “And we have to start putting our foot down and taking one less bag, listening to one less song sometimes.”
Photo credit: Paras Griffin/BET/Getty Images for BET
