Rose McGowan recently responded to director Alexander Payne’s denial of sexual misconduct allegations that she accused him of on August 17th.
“You left me on a street corner afterwards. I was 15”
To give you some context on the situation, last month, the Charmed actress tweeted about an alleged past encounter with Payne. She claimed that he had exhibited sexually inappropriate behavior towards her when she was 15 and he was in his twenties.
“Alexander Payne. You sat me down & played a soft-core porn movie you directed for Showtime under a different name. I still remember your apartment in Silverlake. You are very well-endowed.” she wrote. “You left me on a street corner afterwards. I was 15.”
“What she has said about me in recent social media posts is simply untrue”
Weeks later, Payne has now finally responded to Rose’s accusations. In a guest column for Deadline published on Friday, Alexander Payne firmly denied her accusations of sexual misconduct against him. Payne went on to say that he had “cordial interactions” with McGowan and also commended her activism in the #MeToo movement. However, the director firmly denied her timeline of events.
“What she has said about me in recent social media posts is simply untrue,” wrote Payne, known for his work in films like Sideways, Nebraska and The Descendants. “Rose is mistaken in saying we met when she was fifteen, in the late 1980s,” he seemingly corrected. “I was a full-time film student at UCLA from 1984 until 1990, and I know that our paths never crossed.”
Payne also specifically denied showing her a “soft-core porn movie” because he said he had never directed anything professionally, lurid or otherwise, at the time. “I have also never worked for Showtime or directed under any name other than my own,” he clarified.
“I had no reason to question how old she was”
The director went on to insist that he and Rose didn’t meet until years later in 1991, during his first directing gig, for which McGowan auditioned. “Although she did not get the part, she left a note for me at the casting desk asking that I call her. I had no reason to question how old she was, since the role she read for required an actor who was of age.” Payne then admitted that the two went out on a couple of dates after that and maintained that they both remained on “friendly terms for years.”
Payne concluded his statement, saying, “While I cannot allow false statements about events twenty-nine years ago to go uncorrected, I will continue to wish only the best for Rose.”
“I will now make it a mission to expose him”
McGowan has now responded to his rebuttal. “F— him and his lies is my comment,” said Rose. Safe to say she is quite upset at how things have taken a turn for the worst. McGowan continued, “I told Payne to acknowledge and apologize, he has not. I said I didn’t want to destroy, now I do.”
Shortly after her initial statement back on August 17th, Rose had posted a follow up tweet in which she asked Payne only for an acknowledgement of the aforementioned events. The actress made her intentions clear saying that she didn’t intend to destroy the director and was not expecting an apology from him. “I just want an acknowledgement and an apology. I do not want to destroy,” she had added in her subsequent tweet.
In light of Payne’s denial, Rose responded saying, “Why do these men always lie? I will now make it a mission to expose him. I am not the only one.”
Rose has mentioned this incident before?
McGowan was one of the leading activists and a key figure in the #MeToo movement. She was one of the first to come out and publicly accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexually assaulting her at a Sundance Film Festival hotel in the late ’90s.
McGowan’s recent claim against Payne matched a description of an encounter, with an unnamed man, that she alluded to back in February 2018. While appearing on Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill podcast, Rose mentioned an incident of inappropriate sexual behavior committed against her by a powerful man in Hollywood, when she was 15. At the time, Rose was asked if she would ever name the man in question, to which she replied, “I’ll go reflect on it more and get back to you.”
“Men like Predator Payne, who profited from working with Weinstein, must be stopped”
McGowan argued that Payne’s power as a director gives him influence over the public. She also noted that she wants “people that have watched his films to know his morals are in your mind, his thoughts have become yours.”
The actress points to “his ‘comedy’ ‘Election,’ where the middle-aged teacher that fantasizes having sex with his young student, Reese Witherspoon. I want people to know Hollywood perpetrators show you who they are, their skewed view normalized. Men like Predator Payne, who profited from working with Weinstein, must be stopped from not only assaulting. But must also be prevented from infecting the masses with their propaganda.”
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