Jennifer Aniston, who is set to star in The Morning Show alongside Reese Witherspoon, is now admitting just years after several women came forward about Harvey Weinstein, that she too had a negative encounter with the Hollywood producer. In an interview with Variety’s Power of Women Issue, the actress said he tried to bully her back in the early 2000s.
When Aniston worked on the 2005 crime thriller Derailed, she confessed that the few times she had run-ins with the producer, he wasn’t pleasant.
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“There was the premiere dinner. I remember I was sitting at the dinner table with Clive [Owen], and our producers and a friend of mine was sitting with me. And he literally came to the table and said to my friend: ‘Get up!’ And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” she told the outlet. “And so my friend got up and moved and Harvey sat down. It was just such a level of gross entitlement and piggish behavior.”
But the “bullying” came when Weinstein demanded she wear a dress from his at-the-time wife, Georgina Chapman’s designer collection, Marchesa. He wanted her to promote the fashion label, but Aniston refused.
“He came to visit me in London while we were shooting. He’d be like, ‘OK, so I’d like you to wear one of these to the premiere,’” she said, noting that everything she sorted through just didn’t fit her taste and style.
“[Marchesa] wasn’t what it is today. It was not for me. He was like, ‘You have to wear the dress,’” she continued. “That was my only bullying. And I was like, ‘No, I will not wear the dress.’ … What was he going to do? Come over here and make me wear it?!”
She and Witherspoon’s new series will highlight part of the #MeToo movement, but their idea was written just months before it started and she said they had to go back to the drawing board after.
“The show got picked up. We sold it to Apple and with an outline. Then, about four months later, the whole s— hit the fan. Basically, we had to start from scratch,” she revealed.
The show tells the story of a respected veteran morning news anchor named Alex Levy [Aniston], whose longtime co-anchor, Mitch Kessler [Steve Carrell] is fired after he’s accused of sexual misconduct. As a result of his firing, a younger woman is called to fill the position, Bradley Jackson [Witherspoon].
While Carrell’s character is not based on former Today anchor Matt Lauer, his termination was a small bit of inspiration.
“I went to the DVR that I had of Today before Matt Lauer was fired and then the day he was fired,” she said. “Because that was so fascinating to see.”
