After many years of hinting to what transpired, earlier this month, Rose McGowan revealed Harvey Weinstein had raped her in a hotel room when she was a young and on-the-rise actress in 1997. While a nondisclosure agreement seems to have barred McGowan from speaking about Weinstein beforehand, a new interview with the New York Times sheds light on the means Weinstein and his inner circle recently went through to keep her from disclosing what exactly occurred in that hotel room: And it involved some hush money. Through her lawyer, McGowan said “someone close†to Weinstein offered her $1 million in hush money in late September, which would have been in exchange for signing a nondisclosure agreement. This was because, in fact, her original settlement with Weinstein in 1997 didn’t have a a confidentiality clause, which she only learned about this summer.
“I had all these people I’m paying telling me to take it so that I could fund my art,†McGowan explained to the Times; eventually she responded to Weinstein’s associate asking for $6 million instead. “I figured I could probably have gotten him up to three,†she said. “But I was like — ew, gross, you’re disgusting, I don’t want your money, that would make me feel disgusting.†Ultimately, her mind was changed a few days later, when the first of many bombshell articles about Weinstein’s decades-long sexual harassment and assault history was published. As of now, McGowan will continue to live in Hawaii as she finishes up her memoir, Brave.