Ashley Judd decided to make a deal with Harvey Weinstein in a panicked state when the Hollywood executive made repeated sexual advances toward her in their alleged hotel room encounter.
Judd’s story was included in the bombshell report by The New York Times published a few weeks ago. The 49-year-old actress joined ABC News for an exclusive interview that aired Wednesday in which she revealed that she promised Weinstein he could do what he wanted if she won an Oscar in one of his movies.
Judd said she had no warning about Weinstein’s behavior when she met him at a hotel nearly 20 years ago for what she believed to be a business meeting. She was expecting to meet Weinstein on the patio, but when she arrived she was told to go up to his room.
Weinstein allegedly made his usual move of suggesting a massage and inviting her to watch him shower, but she refused and remained in the hallway.
“I fought with this volley of ‘nos,’ which he ignored. Who knows? Maybe he heard them as ‘maybe,’ maybe he heard them as ‘yeses,’ maybe they turned him on. I don’t know,” Judd said.
“He kept coming at me with all this other stuff, and finally I just said, ‘When I win an Oscar in one of your movies, OK?'” Judd said. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, when you get nominated.’ And I said, ‘No! When I win an Oscar.’ And I fled. I just fled.”
She doesn’t regret the decision.
“Am I proud of that? I’m of two minds: The part that shames myself says no,” Judd explains. “The part of me that understands the way shame works says, ‘That was absolutely brilliant. Good job, kid. You got out of there. Well done.'”
“It’s a very important word, shame, and it’s a very important thing to talk about,” Judd said. “So, we all do the best we can, and our best is good enough. And it’s really OK to have responded however we responded.”