Gwyneth Paltrow Reflects on Harvey Weinstein’s Arrest

Harvey Weinstein became the disgrace of the film industry last year after The New York Times published an exposé in October in which multiple women accused the director of sexual assault, with dozens more sharing their stories in the months since.

Since the article was published, numerous women have accused Weinstein and he was arrested in Manhattan in May and is now facing charges relating to alleged incidents of assault involving three women.

Gwyneth Paltrow was one of the women in the first wave of Weinstein’s accusers, alleging in an October New York Times article that the producer invited her to his hotel room ahead of Paltrow shooting her role in the film Emma. There, she recalled, he ended the visit by “placing his hands on her and suggesting they head to the bedroom for massages.”

“I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified,” Paltrow said in the piece, adding that she refused Weinstein’s advances.

Speaking to the Times now, Paltrow reflected on the producer’s recent arrest, admitting that she feels like she hasn’t “processed it” quite yet.

“I’m still completely in shock,” she said. “I grew up in a world where these kinds of systems remained intact. To see somebody like Harvey Weinstein, who in my professional world was omnipotent and the person who held so much of my career in his hands, in handcuffs … it is just stunning to me.”

“This is a system that has existed for thousands of years, and now you cannot behave that way. The psychological implications for those of us who have been exploited by men in power are so much to process because we’ve built our identities and defense systems and strength out of protecting ourselves against this kind of system,” Paltrow continued. “For a mother of a 14-year-old girl, it’s overwhelming to know we’re living in a culture where ramifications exist for this kind of thing.”

The Goop founder added that she was happy to see women come together in the aftermath of the accusations, which led to the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.

“There’s a veil of shame that’s been lifted off this whole thing,” she said. “There’s this amazing feeling of knit-togetherness in the female community. [Many] women don’t have anything to leverage to protect themselves. That’s why it felt so urgent and upsetting and I felt naïve for not having gone through the mental exercise of postulating what the version was for a single woman trying to make ends meet.”

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