Matt Damon says he knew about Harvey Weinstein sexually harassing Gwyneth Paltrow
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Matt Damon denounced Harvey Weinstein on Monday as a bullying “womanizer” and an “a*****” in a Good Morning America interview, but said “this level of criminal sexual predation is not something that I ever thought was going on.”
Damon appeared alongside George Clooney to talk about their upcoming film Suburbicon and also discuss the scandal involving Weinstein, the former Miramax and the Weinstein Company film executive who helped launch Damon’s career with the 1997 film Good Will Hunting.
Damon said that you could tell almost immediately that Weinstein was a bully upon meeting him.
“You had to spend about five minutes with [Weinstein] to know that he was a bully, he was intimidating,” Damon said. “That was his legend. That was his whole M.O. Like, could you survive a meeting with Harvey?”
Damon said that, because of the quality of films that Miramax was producing in the nineties, people felt the need to continue to work with the company.
“When people say, ‘everybody knew,’ like, yeah, I knew [Weinstein] was an a*****,” Damon said. “He was proud of that, you know what I mean? That’s how he carried himself. I knew he was a womanizer. I wouldn’t want to be married to the guy, but that’s not my business.”
Damon said that he had been aware of the allegations Gwyneth Paltrow made about Weinstein. Paltrow told The New York Times that when she was 22, Weinstein ended a work meeting by placing his hands on her and suggesting they go to his bedroom for massages. Damon and Paltrow co-starred in the Miramax film The Talented Mr. Ripley, but Damon said they didn’t discuss what Paltrow said happened to her. Instead, he said he heard about them from Ben Affleck, who dated Paltrow in the ’90s.
“I never talked to Gwyneth about it,” Damon said. “Ben told me, but I knew that they had come to whatever agreement or understanding that they had come to. She had handled it. And she was the first lady of Miramax, and he treated her incredibly respectfully, always.”
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