Rose McGowan is lashing back after director Alexander Payne denied that he raped her when she was 15.
In a guest column for Deadline, Payne wrote that he had “cordial interactions” with McGowan and applauded her strong stance in the #MeToo movement. McGowan, as many will recall, was one of the most outspoken Harvey Weinstein accusers. After McGowan and other women shared their stories with the New York Times and the New Yorker, dozens of other women shared allegations of sexual assault and rape. Weinstein denied the charges, but is now serving time behind bars in New York for rape and is facing charges in L.A.
Payne denied McGowan’s timeline of events, which had him seducing her at 15.
“What she has said about me in recent social media posts is simply untrue,” wrote Payne, the director of films like Sideways, Nebraska and The Descendants. “Rose is mistaken in saying we met when she was fifteen, in the late 1980s. I was a full-time film student at UCLA from 1984 until 1990, and I know that our paths never crossed.”
MCGOWAN RESPONDS
When asked about Payne’s op-ed, McGowan told Variety: “F— him and his lies is my comment.”
She continued, “I told Payne to acknowledge and apologize, he has not. I said I didn’t want to destroy, now I do. Why do these men always lie? I will now make it a mission to expose him. I am not the only one.”
McGowan argued that Payne’s power as a director gives him influence over the public. “I want people that have watched his films to know his morals are in your mind, his thoughts have become yours,” McGowan told Variety. “Like in 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 Weinstein, must be stopped from not only assaulting, but must also be prevented from infecting the masses with their propaganda.”