The Hustlers star gave yet further context on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “[All] of the sexual harrassment, the inappropriate touching, the, like, telling me to wear short skirts and like, intimidation, that all only happened in the first two years of the show, when I was still very scared that I–you know, I had never done anything big before. I had just graduated from being a waitress, and I was scared of being fired,” she shares. “Once I sort of felt a little bit of job security, then I started saying no to this producer, which infuriated him, but it was okay. So I thought, you know what, I handled it. I don’t need to stain the reputation of this show, or of this producer. I could just keep it inside.”

But doing so had its own consequences. “As a result, I feel like I was never able to really be myself on set, because I’d see my abuser being buddy-buddy with everyone else, knowing what he had done to me,” she admits. “And you know, the thing I learned is that bad feelings and abuse don’t just go away because you will it to. It’s gonna come out somewhere.”

Ultimately, she decided to disclose the harassment in her book to put those controversial tweets—the backlash to which sparked a suicide attempt—into context. “I think it’s important that we engage in curiosity and empathy before we go straight to judgment. Because if somebody does something out of character for them, usually it means something’s going on in their life.”